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cally all. No Round Table; no knights ; none of the interesting difficulties about Arthur's succession: an entire absence of personal characteristics about Guinevere : and, most remarkable of all, no Lancelot, and no Holy Grail.

Nevertheless Geoffrey had, as it has been the fashion to say of late years, "set the heather on fire," and perhaps in no literary instance on record did the blaze spread and heighten itself with such extraordinary speed and intensity. His book must have been written a little before the middle of the twelfth century: by the end thereof the legend was, except for the embellishments and amplifications which the Middle Age was always giving, complete.

In the account of its probable origins and growth which follows nothing can be further from the writer's wish than to emulate the confident dogmatism of those who claim to have proved or disproved this or that fact or hypothesis. In the nature of the case proof is impossible; we cannot go further than probability. It is unfortunate that some of the disputants on this, as on other kindred subjects, have not more frequently remembered the admirable words of the greatest modern practitioner and though he lacked some more recent information, the shrewdest modern critic of romance itself. I need only say that though I have not in the least borrowed from either, and though I make neither responsible for my views, these latter, as they are about to be stated, will be found most to resemble those of Sir Frederic Madden in England and M. Paulin Paris in France--the two critics who, coming after the age of wild guesswork and imperfect reading, and before that of a scholarship which, sometimes at least, endeavours to vindicate itself by innovation for the sake of innovation, certainly equalled, and perhaps exceeded, any others in their familiarity with the actual texts. With that familiarity, so far as MSS. go, I repeat that I do not pretend to vie. But long and diligent reading of the printed material, assisted by such critical lights as critical practice in more literatures than one or two for many years may give, has led me to the belief that when they agreed they were pretty sure to be right, and that when they differed, the authority of either was at least equal, as authority, to anything subsequent.

As Geoffrey fell into the hands of Wace, so did Wace fall into those of Layamon; but here the result is far more interesting, both for the history of the legend itself and for its connection with England. Not only did the priest of Ernley or Arley-on-Severn do the English tongue the inestimable service of introducing Arthur to it, not only did he write the most important book by far, both in size, in form, and in matter, that was written in English between the Conquest and the fourteenth century, but he added immensely to the actual legend. It is true that these additions still do not exactly give us the Arthur whom we know, for they still concern the wars with the Saxons and Romans chiefly. But if it were only that we find first in Layamon the introduction of "elves" at Arthur's birth, and his conveyance by them at death in a magic boat to Queen "Argante" at Avalon, it would be almost enough. But there is much more. The Uther story is enlarged, and with it the appearances of Merlin; the foundation of the Round Table receives added attention; the voluntary yielding of Guinevere, here called Wenhaver, is insisted upon, and Gawain and Bedivere make their appearance. But there is still no Lancelot, and still no Grail.

The other claimant for the authorship of a main part of the story--in this case the Merlin part, and the long history of the Graal from the days of Joseph of Arimathea downwards--is a much more shadowy person, a certain Robert de Borron, a knight of the north of France. Nobody has much interest in disturbing Borron's claims, though they also have been attacked; and it is only necessary to say that there is not the slightest ground for supposing that he was an ancestor of Lord Byron, as was once very gratuitously done, the time when he was first heard of happening to coincide with the popularity of that poet.

Next to the questions of authorship and of origin in point of difficulty come two others--"Which are the older: the prose or the verse romances?" and, "Was there a Latin original of the Graal story?"

But before we go further it may be well also to say a word on the Welsh stories, which, though now admitted to be in their present form later than the Romances, are still regarded as possible originals by some.

Whether it was Walter Map, or Chrestien de Troyes, or both, or neither, to whom the glory of at once completing and exalting the story is due, I at least have no pretension to decide. Whosoever did it, if he did it by himself, was a very great man indeed--a man second only to Dante among the men of the Middle Age. Even if it was done by an irregular company of men, each patching and piecing the others' efforts, the result shows a marvellous "wind of the spirit" abroad and blowing on that company. As before, the reader of Malory only, though he has nearly all the best things, has not quite all even of those, and is without a considerable number of things not quite the best, but good. The most difficult to justify of the omissions of Sir Thomas is the early history of the loves of Guinevere and Lancelot, when the knight was introduced to the queen by Galahault the haughty prince--"Galeotto," as he appears in the most universally known passage of Dante himself. Not merely that unforgettable association, but the charm and grace of the original passage, as well as the dramatic and ethical justification, so to speak, of the fatal passion which wrecked at once Lancelot's quest and Arthur's kingdom, combine to make us regret this exclusion. But Malory's genius was evidently rather an unconscious than a definitely critical one. And though the exquisite felicity of his touch in detail is established once for all by comparing his prose narratives of the Passing of Arthur and the parting of Lancelot and the queen with the verse from which he almost beyond question directly took both, he must sometimes have been bewildered by the mass of material from which he had to select, and may not always have included or excluded with equally unerring judgment.

Of these the chief are Sir Palomides or Palamedes , and Tristram himself.

It is, however, quite easy to understand how, this Tristram legend existing by hypothesis already or being created at the same time, the curious centripetal and agglutinative tendency of mediaeval romance should have brought it into connection with that of Arthur. The mere fact of Mark's being a vassal-king of Greater Britain would have been reason enough; but the parallel between the prowess of Lancelot and Tristram, and between their loves for the two queens, was altogether too tempting to be resisted. So Tristram makes his appearance in Arthur's court, and as a knight of the Round Table, but as not exactly at home there,--as a visitor, an "honorary member" rather than otherwise, and only an occasional partaker of the home tournaments and the adventures abroad which occupy Arthur's knights proper.

"Like Paris handsome, and like Hector brave,"

but more heroic than Paris and more interesting than Hector,--not only a "greatest knight," but at once the sinful lover of his queen and the champion who should himself all but achieve, and in the person of his son actually achieve, the sacred adventure of the Holy Graal. If, as there seems no valid reason to disbelieve, the hitting upon this idea, and the invention or adoption of Lancelot to carry it out, be the work of Walter Mapes, then Walter Mapes is one of the great novelists of the word, and one of the greatest of them. If it was some unknown person , then the same compliment must be paid to that person unknown. Meanwhile the conception and execution of Lancelot, to whomsoever they may be due, are things most happy. Entirely free from the faultlessness which is the curse of the classical hero; his unequalled valour not seldom rewarded only by reverses; his merits redeemed from mawkishness by his one great fault, yet including all virtues that are themselves most amiable, and deformed by no vice that is actually loathsome; the soul of goodness in him always warring with his human frailty;--Sir Lancelot fully deserves the noble funeral eulogy pronounced over his grave, and felt by all the elect to be, in both senses, one of the first of all extant pieces of perfect English prose.

The part which the Holy Graal plays in the legend generally is not the least curious or interesting feature of the whole. As has been already said more than once, it makes no figure at all in the earliest versions: and it is consistent with this, as well as with the general theory and procedure of romance, that when it does appear the development of the part played by it is conducted on two more or less independent lines, which, however, the later compilers at least do not seem to think mutually exclusive. With the usual reserves as to the impossibility of pronouncing with certainty on the exact order of the additions to this wonderful structure of legend, it may be said to be probable, on all available considerations of literary probability, that of the two versions of the Graal story--that in which Percival is the hero of the Quest, and that in which Galahad occupies that place--the former is the earlier. According to this, which commended itself especially to the French and German handlers of the story, the Graal Quest lies very much outside the more intimate concerns of the Arthurian court and the realm of Britain. Indeed, in the latest and perhaps greatest of this school, Wolfram von Eschenbach , the story wanders off into uttermost isles of fancy, quite remote from the proper Arthurian centres. It may perhaps be conceded that this development is in more strict accordance with what we may suppose and can partly perceive to have been the original and almost purely mystical conception of the Graal as entertained by Robert de Borron, or another--the conception in which all earthly, even wedded, love is of the nature of sin, and according to which the perfect knight is only an armed monk, converting the heathen and resisting the temptations of the devil, the world, and more particularly the flesh; diversifying his wars and preachings only or mainly by long mystical visions of sacred history as it presented itself to mediaeval imagination. It is true that the genius of Wolfram has not a little coloured and warmed this chilly ideal: but the story is still conducted rather afar from general human interest, and very far off indeed from the special interests of Arthur.

But the intelligent genius who shaped the Arthuriad has escaped this danger, and that not merely by the simple process which Dryden, with his placid irony, somewhere describes as "leaving scarce three of the characters alive." We have reached, and feel that we have reached, the conclusion of the whole matter when the Graal has been taken to Heaven, and Arthur has gone to Avalon. Nobody wants to hear anything of the doubtless excellent Duke and King Constantine. Sir Ector himself could not leave the stage with more grace than with his great discourse on his dead comrade and kinsman. Lancelot's only son has gone with the Graal. The end is not violent or factitious, it is necessary and inevitable. It were even less unwise to seek the grave of Arthur than to attempt to take up the story of the Arthurians after king and queen and Lancelot are gone each to his and her own place, after the Graal is attained, after the Round Table is dissolved.

It may perhaps seem to some readers that too much praise has been given to that romance itself. Far as we are, not merely from Ascham's days, but from those in which the excellent Dunlop was bound to confess that "they will be found extremely defective in those points which have been laid down as constituting excellence in fictitious narrative," that they are "improbable," full of "glaring anachronisms and geographical blunders," "not well shaded and distinguished in character," possessing heroines such as "the mistresses of Tristan and Lancelot" who are "women of abandoned character," "highly reprehensible in their moral tendency," "equalled by the most insipid romance of the present day as a fund of amusement." In those days even Scott thought it prudent to limit his praise of Malory's book to the statement that "it is written in pure old English, and many of the wild adventures which it contains are told with a simplicity bordering on the sublime." Of Malory--thanks to the charms of his own book in the editions of Southey, of the two editors in 12mo, of Wright and of Sir Edward Strachey, not to mention the recent and stately issues given by Dr Sommer and Professor Rhys--a better idea has long prevailed, though there are some gainsayers. But of the originals, and of the Legend as a whole, the knowledge is too much limited to those who see in that legend only an opportunity for discussing texts and dates, origins and national claims. Its extraordinary beauty, and the genius which at some time or other, in one brain or in many, developed it from the extremely meagre materials which are all that can be certainly traced, too often escape attention altogether, and have hardly, I think, in a single instance obtained full recognition.

The theories, not to give them one by one as set forth by individual writers, are in the main as follows:--

Like the Celtic theory, the French has an engaging appearance of justice and probability, and it has over the Celtic the overwhelming advantage as regards texts. That all, without exception, of the oldest texts in which the complete romantic story of Arthur appears are in the French language is a fact entirely indisputable, and at first blench conclusive. We may even put it more strongly still and say that, taking positive evidence as apart from mere assertion , there is nothing to show that any part of the full romantic story of Arthur, as distinguished from the meagre quasi-historical outline of Geoffrey, ever appeared in any language before it appeared in French. The most certain of the three personal claimants for the origination of these early texts, Chrestien de Troyes, was undoubtedly a Frenchman in the wide sense; so was Robert de Borron, another of them. The very phrase so familiar to readers of Malory, "the French book," comes to the assistance of the claim.

And yet, as is the case with some other claims which look irresistible at first sight, the strength of this shrinks and dwindles remarkably when it comes to be examined. One consideration is by itself sufficient, not indeed totally to destroy it, but to make a terrible abatement in its cogency; and this is, that if the great Arthurian romances, written between the middle and end of the twelfth century, were written in French, it was chiefly because they could not have been written in any other tongue. Not only was no other language generally intelligible to that public of knights and ladies to which they were addressed; not only was no other vernacular language generally known to European men of letters, but no such vernacular, except Proven?al, had attained to anything like the perfection necessary to make it a convenient vehicle. Whatever the nationality of the writer or writers, it was more likely that he or they would write in French than in any other language. And as a matter of fact we see that the third of the great national claimants was an Englishman, while it is not certain that Robert de Borron was not an English subject. Nor is it yet formally determined whether Chrestien himself, in those parts of his work which are specially Arthurian, had not Map or some one else before him as an authority.

I should think, therefore, that the most reasonable account of the whole matter may be somewhat as follows, using imagination as little as possible, and limiting hypothesis rigidly to what is necessary to connect, explain, and render generally intelligible the historical facts which have been already summarised. And I may add that while this account is not very different from the views of the earliest of really learned modern authorities, Sir Frederic Madden and M. Paulin Paris, I was surprised to find how much it agrees with that of one of the very latest, M. Loth.

In so far as the probable personality and exploits, and the almost certain tradition of such exploits and such a personality, goes, there is no reason for, and much reason against, denying a Celtic origin to this Legend of Arthur. The best authorities have differed as to the amount of really ancient testimony in Welsh as to him, and it seems to be agreed by the best authorities that there is no ancient tradition in any other branch of Celtic literature. But if we take the mentions allowed as ancient by such a careful critic as Professor Rhys, if we combine them with the place-name evidence, and if we add the really important fact, that of the earliest literary dealers, certain or probable, with the legend, Geoffrey, Layamon, and Walter Map were neighbours of Wales, and Wace a neighbour of Brittany, to suppose that Arthur as a subject for romantic treatment was a figment of some non-Celtic brain, Saxon or Norman, French or English, is not only gratuitous but excessively unreasonable. Again, there can be no reasonable doubt that the Merlin legends, in at least their inception, were Celtic likewise. The attempt once made to identify Merlin with the well-known "Marcolf," who serves as Solomon's interlocutor in a mass of early literature more or less Eastern in origin, is one of those critical freaks which betray an utterly uncritical temperament. Yet further, I should be inclined to allow no small portion of Celtic ingredient in the spirit, the tendency, the essence of the Arthurian Legend. We want something to account for this, which is not Saxon, not Norman, not French, not Teutonic generally, not Latin, not Eastern; and I at least am unable to discover where this something comes from if it is not from the Celtic fringe of England and of Normandy.

On the other hand, the supposition that the fashioning, partly out of vague tradition, partly it may be out of more definite Celtic tales like that of Tristram, partly from classical, Eastern, and other sources, belongs to the English in the wide sense--that is to say, the nation or nations partly under English rule proper, partly under Scottish, partly under that of the feudatories or allies of the English kings as Dukes of Normandy--has to support it not merely the arguments stated above as to the concentration of the legend proper between Troyes and Herefordshire, between Broceliande and Northumbria, as to MS. authority, as to the inveteracy of the legend in English,--not only those negative ones as to the certainty that if it were written by Englishmen it would be written in French,--but another, which to the comparative student of literary history may seem strongest of all.

Here first, here eminently, and here just at the time when we should expect it, do we see that strange faculty for exhibiting a blend, a union, a cross of characteristics diverse in themselves, and giving when blended a result different from any of the parts, which is more than anything else the characteristic of the English language, of English literature, of English politics, of everything that is English. Classical rhetoric, French gallantry, Saxon religiosity and intense realisation of the other world, Oriental extravagance to some extent, the "Celtic vague"--all these things are there. But they are all co-ordinated, dominated, fashioned anew by some thing which is none of them, but which is the English genius, that curious, anomalous, many-sided genius, which to those who look at only one side of it seems insular, provincial, limited, and which yet has given us Shakespeare, the one writer of the world to whom the world allows an absolute universality.

ANTIQUITY IN ROMANCE.

Nevertheless, the attractions, intrinsic and extrinsic, of the division are neither few nor small. This very confusion, as it seems nowadays, this extraordinary and almost monstrous blending of uncritical history and unbridled romance, shows one of the most characteristic sides of the whole matter, and exhibits, as do few other things, that condition of mediaeval thought in regard to all critical questions which has so constantly to be insisted on. As in the case of the Arthurian story, the matter thus presented caught hold of the mediaeval imagination with a remarkable grip, and some of the most interesting literary successions of all history date from it. Among them it is almost enough to mention the chain of names--Beno?t de Sainte-More, Guido Colonna, Boccaccio, Chaucer, Henryson--which reaches Shakespeare, and does not cease with him, all successively elaborating the history of Troilus and Cressida. The lively story, first formed, like so many others, by the French genius, and well, if rather impudently, copied by Colonna; Boccaccio's vivid Italian Cressida; Chaucer's inimitable Pandarus, the first pleasing example of the English talent for humorous portrayal in fiction; the wonderful passage, culminating in a more wonderful single line, of that Dunfermline schoolmaster whom some inconceivable person has declared to be only a poet to "Scotch patriotism"; the great gnomic verses of Shakespeare's Ulysses, and the various, unequal, sometimes almost repulsive, never otherwise than powerful, pageantry of that play, which has been perhaps more misjudged than any other of Shakespeare's,--all these spring from the Tale of Troy, not in the least as handed down by the ancients, but tricked and frounced as the Middle Age was wont. Nor is this half-borrowed interest by any means the only one. The Cressid story, indeed, does not reach its full attraction as a direct subject of literary treatment till the fourteenth century. But the great Alexander cycle gives us work which merely as poetry equals all but the very best mediaeval work, and its importance in connection with the famous metre named from it is of itself capital.

The Alexander story, which Mr Wallis Budge, our chief authority on the Oriental versions of it, speaks of as "a book which has had more readers than any other, the Bible alone excepted," is of an antiquity impossible to determine in any manner at all certain. Nor is the exact place of its origin, or the language in which it was originally written, to be pronounced upon with anything like confidence. What does seem reasonably sure is that what is called "the Pseudo-Callisthenes"--that is to say, the fabulous biography of the great king, which is certainly the basis of all Western, and perhaps that of most Eastern, versions of the legend--was put into Greek at least as early as the third century after Christ, and thence into Latin before the middle of the fourth. And it appears probable that some of the Eastern versions, if not themselves the original , represent Greek texts older than those we have, as well as in some cases other Eastern texts which may be older still. Before any modern Western vernacular handled the subject, there were Alexander legends, not merely in Greek and Latin, not merely in AEthiopic or Coptic, but in Armenian and Syriac, in Hebrew and Arabic, in Persian and perhaps in Turkish: and it is possible that, either indirectly before the Crusades, or directly through and after them, the legend as told in the West received additions from the East.

As a whole, however, the Pseudo-Callisthenes, or rather his Latin interpreter Julius Valerius, was the main source of the mediaeval legend of Alexander. And it is not at all impossible that this Alexander legend did, at second-hand, and by suggesting imitation of its contents and methods, give to some of the most noteworthy parts of mediaeval literature itself an Eastern colouring, perhaps to some extent even an Eastern substance.

Nor could they, indeed, be said to be so very different in nature from at least the opening part of the Callisthenes version itself. This starts with what seems to be the capital and oldest part of the whole fabulous story, a very circumstantial account of the fictitious circumstances of the birth of Alexander. According to this, which is pretty constantly preserved in all the fabulous versions of the legend , Nectanabus, an Egyptian king and magician, having ascertained by sortilege that his throne is doomed, quits the country and goes to Macedonia. There he falls in love with Olympias, and during the absence of her husband succeeds by magic arts not only in persuading her that the god Ammon is her lover, but to some extent in persuading King Philip to believe this, and to accept the consequences, the part of Ammon having been played of course by Nectanabus himself. Bucephalus makes a considerable figure in the story, and Nectanabus devotes much attention to Alexander's education--care which the Prince repays by pushing his father and tutor into a pit, where the sorcerer dies after revealing the relationship. The rest of the story is mainly occupied by the wars with Darius and Porus , and two important parts, or rather appendices, of it are epistolary communications between Aristotle and Alexander on the one hand, Alexander and Dindymus , King of the Brahmins, on the other. After his Indian adventures the king is poisoned by Cassander or at his instigation.

"Dicunt alquant estrobatour Quel reys fud filz d'encantatour: Mentent fellon losengetour; Mai en credreyz nec un de lour."

But the fragment is unluckily so short that it is impossible to say much of its matter.

In contradistinction to this prolixity, the visit to Jerusalem, and the two battles of Arbela and Issus mixed into one, are very rapidly passed over, though the murder of Darius and Alexander's vengeance for it are duly mentioned. Something like a new beginning then occurs, and the more marvellous part of the narrative opens. After passing the desert and visiting the bottom of the sea in a glass case, Alexander begins his campaign with Porus, whom Darius had summoned to his aid. The actual fighting does not take very long; but there is an elaborate description of the strange tribes and other wonders of India. Porus fights again in Bactria and is again beaten, after which Alexander pursues his allies Gog and Magog and shuts them off by his famous wall. An arrangement with Porus and a visit to the Pillars of Hercules follow. The return is begun, and marvels come thicker and thicker. Strange beasts and amphibious men attack the Greeks. The "Valley from which None Return" presents itself, and Alexander can only obtain passage for his army by devoting himself, though he manages to escape by the aid of a grateful devil whom he sets free from bondage. At the sea-shore sirens beset the host, and numbers perish; after which hairy horned old men tell them of the three magic fountains--the Fountain of Youth, the Fountain of Immortality, and the Fountain of Resurrection. Many monstrous tribes of enemies supervene; also a Forest of Maidens, kind but of hamadryad nature--"flower-women," as they have been poetically called. It is only after this experience that they come to the Fountain of Youth--the Fontaine de Jouvence--which has left such an indelible impression on tradition. Treachery had deprived Alexander of access to that of Immortality; and that of Resurrection has done nothing but restore two cooked fish to life. But after suffering intense cold, and passing through a rain of blood, the army arrives at the Jouvence, bathes therein, and all become as men thirty years old. The fountain is a branch of the Euphrates, the river of Paradise. After this they come to the Trees of the Sun and Moon--speaking trees which foretell Alexander's death. Porus hears of this, and when the army returns to India he picks a quarrel, and the two kings fight. Bucephalus is mortally wounded; but Porus is killed. The beginnings of treason, plots against Alexander, and the episode of Queen Candace follow. The king marches on Babylon and soars into the air in a car drawn by griffins. At Babylon there is much fighting; indeed, except the Foray of Gaza, this is the chief part of the book devoted to that subject, the Persian and Indian wars having been, as we saw, but lightly treated. The Amazons are brought in next; but fighting recommences with the siege of "Defur." An enchanted river, which whosoever drinks he becomes guilty of cowardice or treachery, follows; and then we return to Tarsus and Candace, that courteous queen. Meanwhile the traitors Antipater and "Divinuspater" continue plotting, and though Alexander is warned against them by his mother Olympias, they succeed in poisoning him. The death of the king and the regret of his Twelve Peers, to whom he has distributed his dominions, finish the poem.

The second part deals with "Pore"--in other words, with the Indian expedition and its wonders. These are copied from the French, but by no means slavishly. The army is, on the whole, even worse treated by savage beasts and men on its way to India than in the original; but the handling, including the Candace episodes, follows the French more closely than in the first part. The fighting at "Defur," however, like that at Gaza, is omitted; and the wilder and more mystical and luxuriant parts of the story--the three Fountains, the Sirens, the flower-maidens, and the like--are either omitted likewise or handled more prosaically.

One of the most curious things about this poem is that every division--divisions of which Weber made chapters--begins by a short gnomic piece in the following style:--

"Day spryng is jolyf tide. He that can his tyme abyde, Oft he schal his wille bytyde. Loth is grater man to chyde."

The works of these two worthies, which are both of small compass,--Dictys occupies rather more than a hundred, Dares rather more than fifty, pages of the ordinary Teubner classics,--exist at present only in Latin prose, though, as the Greeks were more expert and inventive forgers than the Romans, it is possible, if not even highly probable, that both were, and nearly certain that Dictys was, originally Greek at least in language. Dictys, the older pretty certainly, is introduced by a letter to a certain Quintus Aradius from Lucius Septimius, who informs "his Rufinus" and the world, with a great deal of authority and learning, that the book had been written by Dictys in Punic letters, which Cadmus and Agenor had then made of common use in Greece; that some shepherds found the manuscript written on linden-bark paper in a tin case at his tomb at Gnossus; that their landlord turning the Punic letters into Greek , gave it to Nero the Emperor, who rewarded him richly; and that he, Septimius, having by chance got the book into his hands, thought it worth while to translate it into Latin, both for the sake of making the true history known and "ut otiosi animi desidiam discuteremus." The Dares volume is more ambitious, and purports to be introduced by no less a person than Cornelius Nepos to no less a person than Sallustius Crispus, and to have been "faithfully translated" by the former from MS. in the very hand of Dares, which he found at Athens, in order to correct the late and fabulous authority of Homer, who actually makes gods fight with men!

Nevertheless it is not really disgraceful to the Romantic period that it fastened so eagerly on this sorriest of illegitimate epitomes. Very few persons at that time were in case to compare the literary merit of Homer--even that of Ovid and Virgil--with the literary merit of these bald pieces of bad Latin prose. Moreover, the supernatural elements in the Homeric story, though very congenial to the temper of the Middle Age itself, were presented and ascribed in such a fashion that it was almost impossible for that age to adopt them. Putting aside a certain sentimental cult of "Venus la d?esse d'amors," there was nothing of which the mediaeval mind was more tranquilly convinced than that "Jubiter," "Appollin," and the rest were not mere fond things vainly invented, but actual devils who had got themselves worshipped in the pagan times. It was impossible for a devout Christian man, whatever pranks he might play with his own religion, to represent devils as playing the part of saints and of the Virgin, helping the best heroes, and obtaining their triumph. Nor, audacious as was the faculty of "transfer" possessed by the mediaeval genius, was it easy to Christianise the story in any other way. It is perhaps almost surprising that, so far as I know or remember, no version exists representing Cassandra as a holy and injured nun, making Our Lady play the part of Venus to AEneas, and even punishing the sacrilegious Diomed for wounding her. But I do not think I have heard of such a version , and it would have been a somewhat violent escapade for even a mediaeval fancy.

Not that Beno?t is by any means a person to be contemptuously spoken of. In the first place, as we shall see presently, he was for many hundred years completely and rather impudently robbed of his fame; in the second, he is the literary ancestor of far greater men than himself; and in the third, his verse, though not free from the besetting sin of its kind, and especially of the octosyllabic variety--the sin of smooth but insignificant fluency--is always pleasant, and sometimes picturesque. Still there is no doubt that at present the second claim is the strongest with us; and that if Beno?t de Sainte-More had not, through his plagiarist Colonna, been the original of Boccaccio and Chaucer and Shakespeare, he would require little more than a bare mention here.

"Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?"

But Briseida, with a rather excessive politeness, and leaving him a good deal of hope, informs him that she has already a fair friend yonder. Whereat, as is reasonable, he is not too much discouraged. It must be supposed that this is related to Troilus, for in the next fight he, after Diomed has been wounded, reproaches Briseida pretty openly. He is not wrong, for Briseida weeps at Diomed's wound, and gives herself to the Greek, or determines to do so, on the philosophical principle that Troilus is lost to her. Achilles then kills Troilus himself, and we hear no more of the lady.

The volubility of Beno?t assigns divers long speeches to Briseida, in which favourable interpreters have seen the germ of the future Cressid; and in which any fair critic may see the suggestion of her. But it is little more than a suggestion. Of the full and masterly conception of Cressid as a type of woman which was afterwards reached, Troilus, and Diomed, and Pandarus, and the wrath of the gods were essential features. Here Troilus is a shadow, Diomed not much more, Pandarus non-existent, the vengeance of Love on a false lover unthought of. Briseida, though she has changed her name, and parentage, and status, is still, as even the patriotic enthusiasm of MM. Moland and d'H?ricault perceives, the Briseis of Homer, a slave-girl who changes masters, and for her own pleasure as well as her own safety is chiefly anxious to please the master that is near. The vivifying touch was brought by Boccaccio, and Boccaccio falls out of our story.

And we see from them very well not merely in what light the Middle Ages regarded the classical stories, but also to what extent the classical stories affected the Middle Ages. This latter point is of the more importance in that even yet the exact bearing and meaning of the Renaissance in this respect is by no means universally comprehended. It may be hoped, if not very certainly trusted, that most educated persons have now got rid of the eighteenth-century notion of mediaeval times as being almost totally ignorant of the classics themselves, a notion which careful reading of Chaucer alone should be quite sufficient to dispel. The fact of course is, that all through the Middle Ages the Latin classics were known, unequally but very fairly in most cases, while the earlier Middle Ages at least were by no means ignorant of Greek.

THE MAKING OF ENGLISH AND THE SETTLEMENT OF EUROPEAN PROSODY.

SPECIAL INTEREST OF EARLY MIDDLE ENGLISH. DECAY OF ANGLO-SAXON. EARLY MIDDLE ENGLISH LITERATURE. SCANTINESS OF ITS CONSTITUENTS. LAYAMON. THE FORM OF THE 'BRUT.' ITS SUBSTANCE. THE 'ORMULUM': ITS METRE, ITS SPELLING. THE 'ANCREN RIWLE.' THE 'OWL AND THE NIGHTINGALE.' PROVERBS. ROBERT OF GLOUCESTER. ROMANCES. 'HAVELOK THE DANE.' 'KING HORN.' THE PROSODY OF THE MODERN LANGUAGES. HISTORICAL RETROSPECT. ANGLO-SAXON PROSODY. ROMANCE PROSODY. ENGLISH PROSODY. THE LATER ALLITERATION. THE NEW VERSE. RHYME AND SYLLABIC EQUIVALENCE. ACCENT AND QUANTITY. THE GAIN OF FORM. THE "ACCENT" THEORY. INITIAL FALLACIES, AND FINAL PERVERSITIES THEREOF.

It is to be hoped that by this time a middle way, tolerably free from molestation, may be taken between those historians of English who would have a great gulf fixed before Chaucer, and those who insist upon absolute continuity from Caedmon to Tennyson. There must surely be something between dismissing Anglo-Saxon as "that nocturnal portion of our literature," between calling it "impossible to pronounce with certainty whether anything in it is artistically good or bad," and thinking it proper, as it has sometimes been thought, in an examination in English literature, to give four papers to Caedmon, AElfric, and Wulfstan, and one to the combined works of Addison, Pope, Johnson, and Burke. Extravagances of the latter kind have still, their heyday of reaction not being quite past, a better chance than extravagances of the former. But both may surely be avoided.

The evidence is rendered more easy in the present connection by the fact, recognised by the most competent authorities in First English or Anglo-Saxon itself, that for some time before the arbitrary line of the Conquest the productive powers of the literature had been failing, and the language itself was showing signs of change. No poetry of the first class seems to have been written in it much after the end of the ninth century, little prose of a very good class after the beginning of the eleventh; and its inflexions must in time have given way--were, it is said by some, actually giving way--before the results of the invasion and assimilation of French and Latin. The Conquest helped; but it did not wholly cause.

This, however, is no doubt open to argument, and the argument would have to be conducted mainly if not wholly on philological considerations, with which we do not here meddle. The indisputable literary facts are that the canon of pure Anglo-Saxon or Old-English literature closes with the end of the Saxon Chronicle in 1154, and that the "Semi-Saxon," the "First Middle English," which then makes its appearance, approximates, almost decade by decade, almost year by year, nearer and nearer to the modern type. And for our purpose, though not for the purpose of a history of English Literature proper, the contemporary French and Latin writing has to be taken side by side with it.

It is not surprising that, although the Latin literary production of the time, especially in history, was at least equal to that of any other European country, and though it is at least probable that some of the greatest achievements of literature, French in language, are English in nationality, the vernacular should for long have been a little scanty and a little undistinguished in its yield. Periods of moulting, of putting on new skins, and the like, are never periods of extreme physical vigour. And besides, this Anglo-Saxon itself had been distinctly on the wane as a literary language for more than a century, while it had never been very fertile in varieties of profane literature. This infertility is not surprising. Except at rare periods literature without literary competition and comparison is impossible; and the Anglo-Saxons had absolutely no modern literature to compare and compete with. If any existed, their own was far ahead of it. On the other hand, though the supposed ignorance of Latin and even Greek in the "dark" ages has long been known to be a figment of ignorance itself, circumstances connected with, though not confined to, the concentration of learning and teaching in the clergy brought about a disproportionate attention to theology. The result was that the completest Anglo-Saxon library of which we can form any well-based conception would have contained about ten cases of religious to one of non-religious books, and would have held in that eleventh but little poetry, and hardly any prose with an object other than information or practical use.

The only explanation of this, though it is an explanation which leaves a good deal unexplained, is, of course, that the sense both of historical criticism and of the duty of one writer to another was hardly born. The curiosity of the Middle Ages was great; their literary faculty, though somewhat incult and infantine, was great likewise: and there were such enormous gaps in their positive knowledge that the sharp sense of division between the certain, the uncertain, and the demonstrably false, which has grown up later, could hardly exist. It seems to have been every man's desire to leave each tale a little richer, fuller, handsomer, than he found it: and in doing this he hesitated neither at the accumulation of separate and sometimes incongruous stories, nor at the insertion of bits and scraps from various sources, nor, it would appear, at the addition of what seemed to him possible or desirable, without troubling himself to examine whether there was any ground for considering it actual.

"Engeland is a well good land, I ween of each land the best, Yset in the end of the world, as all in the West: The sea goeth him all about, he stands as an isle, His foes he dares the less doubt but it be through guile Of folk of the self land, as men hath y-seen while."

"Middel-erd for mon wes mad,"

"Bytuene Mershe and Avoril When spray beginneth to springe, The little foul hath hire wyl On hyre lud to synge: Ich libbe in love-longinge For semlokest of alle thynge, He may me blisse bringe Icham in hire banndoun. An hendy hap ichabbe y-hent, Ichot from hevine it is me sent, From alle wymmen my love is lent Ant lyht on Alisoun.

On hew hire her is fayr ynoh Hire browe bronne, hire eye blake; With lovsom chere he on me loh; With middel small ant wel y-make; Bott he me wille to hire take, For to buen hire owen make, Long to lyven ichulle forsake, Ant feye fallen a-doun. An hendy hap, &c.

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