Romance in its widest sense includes the entire literature of fiction, as well as the early narrations in which fact and legend were blended in historical form, before the simple minds of the people had acquired a clear conception of their distinctness. There are, however, certain ill-defined limitations in the analysis of fiction which enable us to assign distinct places to the legend, the ballad, the epic, the fable, the tale, the romance, and the novel. As usual in all attempts at precise classifica-tion, we find that the lines of demarcation cannot be drawn with rigid exactness, and that many works may be referred to more than one division. But the general con-ception of romance is the one which will here be followed, and which roughly divides the subject into (i.) Romances of Chivalry—chiefly their prose forms—and (ii.) the Romances of Love and Adventure, which follow them.

Romance, as a distinct branch of the literature of fiction, belongs essentially to the Middle Ages and to Europe. The romance of chivalry, as it is called, prevailed during R the four centuries of knighthood, and there can be little of doubt that the institutions of chivalry were considerably cl1" influenced by the works of the early romancers. The establishment of the orders of St John and the Temple was based upon an exalted conception of duty and devo-tion, which the. hard test of experience soon modified, and which would have perished utterly but for the embodiment of its ideal in the Round Table romances. The characters of Galaad and the original Perceval represent types of unattainable perfection, and were therefore models which, although commanding reverence, failed to excite as deep an interest as did the second Perceval, Sir Lancelot, Sir Tristan, and Sir Gawain. In these the noblest qualities were blemished by human frailties, and, as a necessary consequence, the knights miscarried a little below the summit of perfect achievement. Walter Map cannot be sufficiently eulogized for the tact and skill with which he drew the two first-named personages. Galaad is brought upon the stage for but a very short time, and is then dismissed in a blaze of saintly glory, while Perceval, although adapted from the French writer's purer knight of that name, is allowed a much larger space upon the canvas, at the cost of a few minor sins which suffice to ensure his failure and to prove him a man. The other knights are brave, generous, self-sacrificing, and devout, but the indis-pensable virtue of chastity is absent from their lives, and they are foredoomed to misfortune. The perfect ideal, however, underlies the description of all their acts and motives, and the reader or hearer was never allowed to forget it amid the more powerful attractions of the story.
The real prototype of the chivalric romance was the ancient epic : the Greek and Latin poems upon the win-ning of the Golden Fleece, the siege of Troy, the wander-ings of Ulysses and of ./Eneas, furnish the truest parallel Classical to the mediaeval romances of knighthood. The tales romances.whieh are usually dignified with the name of "classical romances " have really no claim to that rank; they were produced in the age of decadence and correspond much more closely to the mediaeval fabliau and the 17th-century novel than to the romance proper. As a matter of course every nation had its legends and popular tales, co-exist-ent with literary works of greater importance; but the Greeks at least, and the Romans following their example, never condescended during their ages of intellectual vigour to put such figments into written form, so that even the famous Milesian tales are now quite lost. It was not until the Greeks became a widely dispersed, a subject and deteriorated race, and not till the strength and manhood of Rome were buried in the slough of imperial corruption, that sophists and rhetoricians began to construct those artificial tales which we call Greek and Latin romances. They form, however, an epoch, as the earliest prose works of imagination in a European language, and cannot there-fore remain unnoticed here. They were succeeded in time by Christian narratives, usually woven into the lives of saints or used as illustrations in the sermons of great preachers; these latter formed a transition to the semi-religious story of the Grail, a bowl or goblet confounded with the chalice used at the Last Supper, with the cup used to collect the precious blood of our Lord, and sym-bolically with the Holy Sepulchre itself. The achievers of the Grail-quest, or kings of the Grail, were typified in the Knights Templars and the Knights of St John; thus the true school of romance arose in intimate connexion with the changes in European life and manners which were brought about by the crusades. Fabliaux. The chansons de geste, which constituted a poetical intro-duction to the romances of chivalry in France, were fol-lowed by the fabliaux, metrical novelettes which furnished material to the Italian writers of prose tales in the 14th and 15th centuries,—a form of composition which was not acclimatized elsewhere than in Italy till the 16th century, and which then became the remote prototype of the modern novel. The older and nobler knighthood blossomed in France for the last time in Bayard, in England in Sir Philip Sidney; but the genuine literature of chivalric romance may be said to have come to an end with the 15th century. The knightly romances produced in the 16th century were belated and artificial examples of their class ; and, although the effects of the conquest of Granada and the discovery of America did not wholly put an end to the lingering romantic spirit in Spain, it hardly sur-vived them for half a century. Hence the inferior character of most of the libros de caballerias, which chiefly date from the 16th century. Out of them grew the fictions known as 16th and 17th century romance in Spain, France, and England,—monstrous and uninviting examples of per-verted ingenuity, utterly dissonant from the literature of pure romance as we conceive it in the chivalrous fictions of the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries. A more practical and utilitarian spirit set in with the latter half of the 17th century, in which readers found themselves out of sympathy with the imaginative and mysterious atmosphere of romance. Accordingly the modern novel arose, a form of composition in which the manners and customs of everyday life were more or less faithfully depicted, and which has remained in undiminished popularity to the present time.

The subject will be dealt with in the following order :— I. Greek and Latin romance, under the subdivisions—(a) classical and post-classical prose fictions and (b) pseudo-classical works. II. Mediaeval romance, embracing—(a) the Arthurian cycle, (6) the Charlemagne cycle, (c) the Spanish cycle, (d) Teutonic and Anglo-Danish, and (e) unaffiliated. III. Modern romance to the 17th century.

I.—GREEK AND LATIN ROMANCE.

(a) Classical and Post-Classical Prose Fictions.

Although the distance in manner is immense between Prose, the Ass of Lucian and the Amadis de Gaula, and again between the latter and Ivanhoe or Eugenie Grandet, there are few varieties of modern fiction which are not faintly shadowed forth in the literatures of Greece and Borne (including in this denomination the post-classical periods of Italy and Byzantium): fables and tales, historical, philosophical, and religious novels, love-stories and narra-tives of adventure, marvellous voyages, collections of fictitious letters—all forms are represented. As even the Andaman Isiander and the Bushman have their stories, it is reasonable to suppose that the Greek, who attained a high state of civilization at an extremely remote period, had long been familiar with this method of intellectual gratification. Artistic form was first given to the higher class of such narrations by the Ionians of the Asiatic colonies, when they sang the deeds of gods and heroes in epic poetry and put together the story of Troy now current under the name of Homer. From the Attic Greeks belong-ing to the same stock came the drama in its highest de-velopment,—a fresh step in the representation of events in oral shape. Greek romance is a double misnomer. First, the word " romance " is wrongly applied to the tales we shall shortly discuss; and secondly, we have no right to call anything in art or literature Greek unless it was produced before the time of Alexander the Great, either in Hellas or Ionia or Sicily, or, say, between 800 and 300 B.C. After the defeat of the Greeks at Chaeronea, Mace-donia became the ruling centre, and the free political life of the Greek cities passed away. The conquests of Alex-ander, a Graeco-Albanian monarch, spread Greek civiliza-tion throughout the known world, but crushed Greece proper out of existence. This civilization (see GREECE, vol. xi. p. 136 sq.), influencing peoples foreign to the Greek race, is designated Hellenistic as opposed to the Hellenic, and the chief note of Hellenistic literature is that of imitation. The original springs of Hellenic poetry were dried up, and from the 3d century B.C. the newly affiliated peoples, whose centre was Alexandria, expressed their fancies in novels rather than in epics.

When, about the 1st century of the Christian era, verse gave place in general favour to rhetorical prose the greater ease of the style lent itself to more detailed nar-ratives than the eclogue and love-poem; and the sophist who might formerly have devoted his attention to poetry became in the decadence of Greek literature a writer of novels. From this period to the 10th century were pub-lished the works it is now proposed to analyse. The Greek novel being a late, and it must be confessed an inferior, kind of prose, it would be well if one could trace its rise, progress, and development. This is, however, im-possible here; it is sufficient to refer in passing to the fables of primitive invention, the tales inserted by histo-rians, the Atlantis of Plato, the Cyropxdia of Xenophon, the forged histories of Alexander, the fictitious lives of eminent men, the fabulous voyages, and the apocryphal sacred books of Christians and Jews, as supplying in turn material for building up the highly artificial novel which we find first represented by Iamblichus. One element may, however, be spoken of specially, although it is rather a forerunner of the tale as distinct from the novel or Milesian romance. The Ionic Greeks, living under an Asiatic sky tales an(j corrupted by Oriental luxury, were the first to culti-vate to any extent that kind of literature which, without demanding any intellectual labour, tickles the fancy by voluptuous pictures told in a brief and witty manner. Miletus was especially famous for such tales; hence they were usually known as Milesian (MtA-no-iaxa). What was their exact shape it is difficult to say, as they have entirely perished, leaving only the reputation of the universal favour they enjoyed. Perhaps the story of the Ephesian matron told by Petronius in the Satirx, and (though less likely) that of Cupid and Psyche in the A sinus of Apuleius, are more closely allied to them than anything we now possess. They must be considered as a natural growth of the imagination, although some may have been contributed by Orientals or Egyptians; and, while forming a portion of the materials upon which the later Hellenistic novel was constructed, they differed widely from it in form and matter. Ovid cannot be considered as a person easily shocked, yet in two passages of the Tristia he says— " Junxit Aristides Milesia crimina seeum " (Trist., ii. 413). '' Vertit Aristiden Sisenna, nee obfuit illi Historian turpes inseruisse jocos " (ib., 443-444).

Plutarch (Crassus, 32) refers to the fact of a copy of this very translation by L. Cornelius Sisenna (a contem-porary of Sulla) having been found in the baggage of a Roman officer, which gave occasion for Surenas to anim-advert upon the Romans carrying with them infamous books during war time. This testimony gives sufficient indication of the nature of the Milesian tales. They must have been short and witty anecdotes, turning chiefly upon the subject of love in its grosser form, and may be regarded as the prototypes of the Italian novelle and the Provencal and French fabliaux. All that remains to us consists of the names of a few writers and some imita-tions and translations. The best-known writer whose fame has reached us is Aristides of Miletus, though we are ignorant of his life and even of the age in which he lived. A more recent author of the same class was Clodius Albinus, the rival of Septimius Severus. We also hear of Ephesian, Cyprian, and Sybaritic tales, the last almost as famous as those of Miletus. Aristophanes (as well as Ovid) specially refers to them. Yet after all they exercised but little influence upon the Hellenistic novel beyond perhaps furnishing the more indecent incidents. The lost 'EptoriKa. of Clearchus of Soli, a pupil of Aristotle, may have been more closely connected with that branch of our subject. The love-stories (Hepl epam/cuV _n-aOrnxaTwv') of Parthenius of Nicaea are also different. They consist of thirty-six brief tales ending in an unfortunate manner, and were dedicated to Cornelius Gallus as forming subjects for poet-ical treatment. The author carefully indicates the sources whence he took them, thus giving a special value to his collection. He informs us that some were derived from " the Milesian adventures " of Hegesippus, and also men-tions Naxian, Pallenian, Lydian, Trojan, and Bithynian tales. Like Parthenius, Conon was of the Augustan age, and compiled a collection of fifty narratives (A^yqo-w) of heroic times, relating chiefly to the foundation of colonies. They are analysed by Photius. Cervantes has used one of them in Don Quixote.

The first we hear of the Greek or Hellenistic novel is in Greek the time of Trajan (c. 110), when Iamblichus, a Syrian bynovels-descent and a freeman, born and educated at Babylon, wrote in Greek his Babylonica, which is known from Suidas, Photius, and a scholium discovered by Henry Estienne on an ancient MS. of the latter writer. A complete codex existed in 1671; and a considerable fragment has been reprinted by Mai (Nova Coll. Script. Vet., ii. 349, &c). Suidas states that the Babylonica consisted of thirty-nine books, but Photius, who gives a full abstract (Bibliotheca, cod. 94), only mentions seventeen. The story is that of Sinonis and Rhodanes, married lovers, persecuted by Garmus, king of Babylon, who is fascinated by Sinonis. They fly, and are pursued by the royal eunuchs, who give them no peace through many adventurous scenes. A remarkable resemblance between the fugitives and another couple, Euphrates and Mesopotamia, is the chief subject of the plot. We now meet, incorporated in the works of writers whose dignity might be supposed above the sus-picion of story-telling, short tales of a didactic nature, such as those given by Blutarch under the title " On the Virtues, of Women." Dion Chrysostom, the most eminent of the rhetoricians and sophists, has also left among his orations a short novel called The Hunter. The narrator is supposed to have been wrecked on the shores of Euboea and meets a hunter who tells him his history. Two married couples (the hunter and his wife being one) were living in friendly solitude, when one day a stranger came, and asking for money received all the recluses were able to give in the shape of two deerskins. The hunter goes to the city with the traveller, and his first impressions are happily told. He is frightened by the bustle and excitement, and debates with an idler upon the comparative advantages of town and country life. The return home is very delicately drawn. Lucian of Samosata, one of the chief essay-writers of the post-Christian age, has left two romances, Lucius or the Ass and the True History, both of which have been briefly analysed in the article LUCIAN (vol. xv. p. 43). The former was considered by Photius (cod. 129) to have been taken from a fable by Lucius of Patrae and to have thus had a common origin with the Asinus of Apuleius; others consider Lucian himself to have been the original inventor of the story. The True History has been drawn on by Babelais, Cyrano de Bergerac, Swift, and the author of Baron Munchausen. Like the productions of more modern satirists, it loses much of its point and meaning when the allusions upon which the chief interest is based can no longer be understood. Bather of the nature of the fictitious voyage was The Wonders beyond Thule of Antonius Diogenes, only known from the account given by Photius (cod. 166), who was of opinion that he belonged to a remote age, shortly after Alexander, and that he served as model to all subsequent writers of romance, including Lucius. A preliminary letter to a friend, Faustinus, indi-cates by the Latin name a much later origin. The heroes visit the Celts and the Aquitanians, both unknown to the Greeks at an early period. Certain paragraphs of the life of Pythagoras by Iamblichus are nearly identical with pass-ages in Diogenes, who in his turn has similar correspond-ence with parts of Nicomachus Gerasenus, who lived under Tiberius. The natural inference is that all three writers copied from the same source. Modern authorities place Diogenes at the beginning of the 3d century. The recitals of their travels given by the Arcadian Dinias, the Phoe-nician Dercyllis, and her brother Mantinias are such as would be imagined by persons who had never left their native hamlet. The itinerary of the routes followed by the different personages is extremely confused. By Thule the writer probably understood Iceland or Norway, deriv-ing his information from Pytheas.

The Latin Apollonius of Tyre is undoubtedly derived ofrom a lost Greek original, and therefore claims a place here, as representing one of the earliest love-stories we can assign to that literature. It may date from the 3d or 4th century, and was perhaps translated into Latin verse in the 5th century. What we now possess (beyond the Anglo-Saxon version mentioned below) is a second Latin prose translation made in the 12th or 13th century. The first mention of the work is in a list of books belonging to Wando, abbot of Fontanelle (742), in the diocese of Bouen. The story runs that Antiochus, king of Syria, entertaining an undue affection for his daughter Tarsia, keeps off suitors by an unsolvable riddle. But Apollonius, king of Tyre, discovers the answer, is obliged to fly, and (as well as Tarsia) undergoes many trials from pirates and other persecutors. An abridgment is included in the Gesta Romanorum. An ancient Anglo-Saxon translation was printed by Thorpe in 1834. Gower derived his adapta-tion in the Confessio Amantis (bk. viii.) from the rhymed redaction of Godfrey of Viterbo (1185). This formed the foundation of Shakespeare's Pericles (1609). The earliest English version (1510) is made from the French Appollyn, Roy de Thire.

The author of the Cyropxdia has already been alluded to. Suidas mentions other writers of fictions of the name of Xenophon,—a native of Antioch, who wrote Babylonica like Iamblichus; a native of Cyprus, who composed a similar book under the title of Gypriaea; and Xenophon of Ephesus, of whom alone we possess anything. This last is the author of the romance Ephesiaca, or the Loves of Anthia and Abrocomas, of which the Monte Cassino MS. (first published in 1726) is the only one extant. His age is unknown : by Locella, one of his editors, he is placed in the time of the Antonines; Peerlkamp, another editor, considers him to be the oldest of the romancers writing in Greek, and that similar writers imitate him closely. Some go so far as to regard him as an imitator of Achilles Tatius and of Heliodorus, and bring him down to the 5th or 6th century. The story runs that Anthia and Abrocomas are married, and, being forbidden by an oracle to travel, of course do so, and are captured by pirates, who take them to Tyre, where Manto, daughter of the chief, falls in love with Abrocomas. Bepelled by him, she marries Mceris and accuses Abrocomas of an attempt to violate her. Moeris in his turn pays improper attentions to Anthia. The great beauty of the hero and heroine causes them many trials at the hands of pirates, brigands, and other stock ornaments of the Greek novel. The local names of the tales of Iamblichus and Xenophon were probably suggested by the MtA?7o-iaKa collected by the earlier writers Dionysius and

Aristides of Miletus. This is the weakest of the class we have under review; its only merit lies in a simple and natural style. By far the best of the romances is the JEthiopica of HELIODOKTJS of Emesa (q.v.). From its first appearance and throughout the whole Byzantine period this work enjoyed a reputation which it has not entirely lost. Within recent times three Frenchmen of mark have praised it,—Amyot, who translated it; Bacine, with whom it was a favourite; and Boileau, who compared it with the Telemaque of Fenelon. It influenced consider-ably the French romance-writers of the 17th century, D'Urfe, Gomberville, and Mademoiselle de Scudery. The denoument is imitated in the Pastor Fido of Guarini; Tasso drew from it the early life of Clorinda in Geru-salemme Liberata; and Baphael painted scenes from it. It was first brought to light in modern times in a MS. from the library of Matthias Corvinus, found at the sack of Buda (Ofen) in 1526, and printed at Basel in 1534. Other codices have since been discovered. The title is taken from the fact that the action of the beginning and end of the story takes place in ^Ethiopia. The daughter of Persine, wife of Hydaspes, king of iEthiopia, was born white through the effect of the sight of a marble statue upon the queen during pregnancy. Fearing an accusation of adultery, the mother gives the babe to the care of Sisi-mithras, a gymnosophist, who carries her to Egypt and places her in charge of Charicles, a Pythian priest. The child is taken to Delphi, and made a priestess of Apollo under the name of Chariclea. Theagenes, a noble Thes-salian, comes to Delphi and the two fall in love with each other. He carries off the priestess with the help of Calasiris, an Egyptian, employed by Persine to seek for her daughter. Then follow many perils from sea-rovers and others, but the chief personages ultimately meet at Meroe at the very moment when Chariclea is about to be sacrificed to the gods by her own father. Her birth is made known, and the lovers are happily married. The rapid succession of events, the variety of the characters, the graphic descriptions of manners and of natural scenery, the simplicity and elegance of the style, give the JEthiopica great charm. Its chaste tone compares favourably with many of the other works of the same class.

Perhaps the most widely known is the delightful pastoral of Daphnis and Chloe (or Aeo-/3ia/«x), generally attributed to Longus, a Greek sophist, who is supposed to have lived in the 4th or the early part of the 5th century. Longus shows traces of an imitation of the JEthiopica of Heliodorus, with whom he may be placed in the first rank of such writers. His work formed the model of the Sireine of Honore d'Urfe, the Liana of Montemayor, the Aminta of Tasso, and the Gentle Shepherd of Allan Ramsay, and has been translated into every European language. The trans-lation of Amyot, afterwards revised by P. L. Courier, has made it extremely popular in France, where the subject has frequently been made use of by Gerard and other painters. The celebrated Paul et Virginie is an echo of the same story. Daphnis and Chloe, two children found by shep-herds, grow up together, nourishing a mutual love which neither suspects. The development of this simple passion forms the chief interest, and there are few incidents. Chloe is carried off by the inevitable pirate, and ultimately regains her family. A few rivals alarm the peace of mind of Daphnis ; but the two lovers are recognized by their parents, and return to a married and happy life in the country. The picture of rural felicity and the innocent affection of the children make the charm of a book which comes nearer perhaps in spirit to the modern novel than any other of its class. Unfortunately there are details here and there which shock modern ideas of decent propriety. Achilles Tatius or Statius, an Alexandrian rhetorician of the latter half of the 5th or beginning of the 6th century, wrote The Adventures of Leucippe and Cleitophon, upon the model of Heliodorus; though an ingenious story, it does not reach the standard of the work it imitates. Like his predecessor, Achilles uses the marvellous with discre-tion, but the accumulation of difficulties is very tedious. Leucippe and Cleitophon fall in love and fly to escape parental anger. They suffer shipwreck, are seized by brigands, and separated. Cleitophon first believes that Leucippe is dead, then finds her, to lose her once more, and again to meet her, a slave, at the very time he is going to marry her mistress, Melitta, a rich Ephesian widow. It so happens that the husband of the latter is not dead but returns to persecute with his love and jealousy both Leucippe and Cleitophon. The descriptions are the best part, the incidents being either tiresome or repulsive and the character of the hero pitiable. Most of the book is written with taste and judgment, but the digressions are too frequent.

Achilles Tatius is the last of these authors who can be said to have the slightest merit. Of the romances which followed his one of the least bad is perhaps Chmreas and Callirrhoe, by one who called himself Chariton of Aphro-disias, placed by various authorities between the 5th and the 9th century. Here the two lovers are already married, and as usual are of superhuman beauty. Unfortunately Chsereas possesses a somewhat irritable temper, and on a jealous suspicion gives his lovely wife a terrible kick in the stomach. She is considered dead and is carried to her grave. But during the night brigands carry her away to Ionia, where her purchaser, Dionysius, falls in love with her. The wife remains faithful to her husband, but, as she is enceinte, consents to marry Dionysius in order that her child may have a father. Meanwhile Chasreas, having learned the ravishment of the supposed corpse, starts in pursuit of his wife. He also is captured by pirates and taken, to Caria. The two finally come together, when Callirrhoe forsakes Dionysius and her son and returns to Sicily with her first husband.

Equally frigid was The Loves of Hysmine and Hysminias by Eustathius or Eumathius, probably a Byzantine, who is placed by Wolf as late as the 12th century, but who may have lived six hundred years earlier. Only a few more remain to be mentioned. Philip of Amphipolis wrote "PoSia/<a (specially referred to by Suidas for its obscenity), Qao-iaKci, and other works, all lost. Severus of Alexandria, a man of fortune with a large library, living in the latter part of the 5th century, has left a few short stories after the style of Parthenius. Photius (cod. 130) also preserves the titles of some works by a certain Damascius, such as Incredible Fictions, Tales of Demons, Marvellous Stories of Appearances from the Dead, &c. The same authority tells us (cod. 188) of a writer of the name of Alexander who compiled a book of marvels. The credit of having written the worst of the Greek romances may be claimed either by Theodoras Prodromus, a monk of the early part of the 12th century, for his metrical history, in nine books, of Rhod-anthe and Dosicles, or by Nicetas Eugenianus, who lived somewhat later, for his iambic poem History of the Lives of Drusilla and Charicles, imitated from the former work. Constantinus Manasses (also 12th century) composed a poetical romance on the loves of Aristander and Callisthia, fragments of which were first printed by Villoison {Anecdota Grxca, 1781).

Early Under BARLAAM AND JOSAPHAT (vol. iii. p. 375) will be
Chris- found the origin and development of the story by St John
tian ro- Q£ TjamascUs, which belongs rather to religious apologues
mances. ' , . . . ° * <p
than to romances. Its origin is entirely Eastern, from
India. The early Christians eagerly seized upon fiction
as affording them a vehicle for spreading their views.

Their contributions to our subject have a strong family likeness, and usually either close with a martyrdom or arc written in praise of a monastic life. To the former class belong the Clementine Recognitions (2d century), Paul and Thekla (3d century), and Cyprian and Justina, which con-tains the germs of the episode of Faust and Gretchen. The ascetic novels include Xenophon and his Sons, Euphrosyne, Zosimus and Mary, Thais, &c. Christian imaginary travels are represented by the Voyage of Macarius to Paradise and comic tales by Agape, Irene, and Chionia.

Besides the forged letters attributed to men of mark, Fictitiou. we have from the Greek sophists collections of fictitious letters, letters serving the same purpose as the epistolary novels of Bousseau and Bichardson. The best known of those writers were Alciphron, Aristaenetus, and Theophylactus Simocatta. Alciphron, the most eminent, of whom we possess 116 Letters in three books, lived in the 3d or 4th century. Many of the letters are written by courtezans and supply curious information on contemporary life and manners. The fifty Erotic Epistles of Aristaenetus form a much less entertaining series than those of Alciphron. Theophylactus Simocatta, an Egyptian by birth, died at Constantinople about the year 640. He wrote eighty-five Letters, divided into moral, rustic, and amatory. They are little else than brief moral treatises mingled with stories.

The review of the origines of the Greek novel shows that Review it arose with the decay of old Greek literature and carried of Greek on a feeble existence down to the 12th century. Tworomalloe-facts make themselves apparent. First, the romance (or novel) proper came late into the field, where it remained in a secondary place ; and secondly, it invariably turned upon a hackneyed circle of incidents and never attained anything of the highly artistic development reached by modern examples. The sameness observable in Greek romance arises from the fact that it was the product of literary'decrepitude and impotence. The writers were in-capable of rivalling the glories of the old Hellenic litera-ture, and they endeavoured to supply originality with reminiscences more or less disguised. The literary and social surroundings in which these authors passed their lives gave them few fresh subjects for investigation, and the characters they describe are mere names. Human nature and the human heart have little meaning for them ; but, as with the Western writers of fiction who closely follow them in point of date, incident is crowded upon incident to the verge of satiety, in order that the attention of the reader may never flag.

The contributions of Roman literature are limited to Roman productions by two writers, Betronius and Apuleius andromances-one story by Martianus Capella, of more recent date and less typical nature. In the comic romance of PETRONIUS ARBITER (q.v.), the taie of the matron of Ephesus first appears among Western popular fictions. This w-as un-doubtedly one of the Ephesian tales already referred to. We find it reproduced in the Seven Wise Masters, in the French fabliaux, and in Brantôme. It is also to be found in the Chinese. The opening words of the Golden Ass of Apuleius indicate that his romance and the Ass of Lucian were both inspired from the same source, per-haps through the medium of Lucius of Patrae mentioned by Photius. Lucian seems to have reproduced the story in a condensed form ; the Latin writer paraphrased and embellished it with other tales, among which the best known is that of Cupid and Psyche,—an antique gem in an unworthy setting. The hero, punished for his curiosity by being turned into an ass, passes through adventures similar in kind to those depicted in the Greek romance. The story ends with a fine description of the mysteries of Isis, into which the hero is initiated and through which he becomes purified. The first two books of the cyclopaedia of the 5th century, the Satyrica of Martianus Capella, known as De Nuptiis Philologies et Mercurii, form a kind of philosophico-allegorical romance in prose mingled with verse. Mercury, wishing to marry, goes, accompanied by Virtue, to Apollo on Parnassus and finds him occupied in taking from four urns the elements of all things. Apollo proposes that Mercury should marry Philology, but the consent of Jupiter must be asked. Jove hesitates and assembles a council of the gods to decide the ques-tion. The request is granted and Philosophy transcribes a decree permitting mortals of superior merit to be ad-mitted among the gods. The second book is devoted to the marriage. At first Philology has fears as to its advisability, and the Muses form a chorus by whom she is admonished. She is visited by Prudence, Justice, Temperance, and the three Graces. At last the bride goes to Mercury's house and all set out for the palace of Jupiter, who receives them surrounded by the gods and many deified mortals.

Of these three works the last does not comply with all our conditions, and of the first two Apuleius is after all merely a translator. The Satirae of Petronius is thus the sole genuine representative of Latin prose romance. When compared with the Greek compositions it will be found to offer a remarkable variation. In the Satirx we at once come in contact with contemporary scenery and habits ; the characters have well-marked individuality ; and the book is full of life. It must not, however, be considered merely as a novel ; its chief object was to satirize the manners of the time. The same tendency to draw a strongly marked picture of the vices and follies of the hour appears also in the Asinus. In the qualities of vigour, interest, and originality of form and substance Apuleius and Petronius are far beyond their Greek rivals.

The texts of the Scriptures Erotici Greed have been edited try C. W. Mitscheilich (Zweibriieken, 1792-94, 3 vols, in four parts) ; by F. Passow (Leipsic, 1824-33, 2 vols. 8vo) ; in Didot's collection, the most complete (Paris, 1856, la. 8vo) ; and by R. Hercher (Leipsic, 1858-59, 2 vols. 12mo). The texts of many of the fictitious historians and biographers are given in Fragmenta Historicorum Grmcorum (Paris, 1841-51, 4 vols. la. 8vo), and Scriptores de Rebus Alexand. M. (ib., 1846, 8vo). Photius (Bibliotheca, Berlin, 1824, 2 vols. 4to) has analysed a great many writings now lost. Early biographical information (not always trustworthy) is supplied by Suidas, and latterly and more perfectly by Fabricius (Biblioth. Grseca). Trans-lations into French are contained in Bibliothèque des romans grecs, tr. en français (Paris, 1797, 12 vols. 18mo) ; Collection de romans grecs, tr. avec des notes par Courier, Larcher, &c., précédée d'un essai sur les romans grecs par M. Villemain (Paris, 1822, 12 vols. 18mo, unfinished) ; Romans grecs, tr. en fran.par Ch. Zevort, précédés d'une introduction sur le roman chez les grecs (Paris, 1856, 2 vols. sm. 8vo). In Italian we have Erotici greci (Florence, 1814-17, 6 vols. 8vo), and in English, Greek Romances, by C. Smith (1855, sm. 8vo). The general authorities are referred to under GKEECB (vol. xi. p. 147). The following are special treatises on the subject :—J. C. F. Manso, "Ueber den griech. Roman," in his Verm. Schriften (Leipsic, 1801) ; F. Jacobs, " Conjecturée de locis nonnullis Achillis Tatii," &c, in Wolf s Litt. Analecten (Berlin, 1820); Wiedemann, "Der gr. Roman," in Arb. der kurländ. Ges., 1848, hft. 3; R. Hercher, "Zur Litt. d. gr. Erotik er," in Jahrb. f. class. Phil., 1858, vol. lxxvii. ; 0. Jahn, " Eine antike Dorfgeschichte," in Aus d. Alterthumsw. ; H. Peter, "Der Roman bei den Griechen," in Neues Schweiz, 1866 ; A. Nicolai, lieber Entstehung u. Wesen d. gr. Romans (Berlin, 1867, 8vo) ; B. Erdmannsdörffer, " Das Zeitalter der Novelle in Hellas," in Preus. Jahrb., vol. xxv. ; C. Härtung, "Die byzantinische Novelle," in Archiv f. d. Stud. d. n. Spr., 1872 ; H. Usener, "Zur Gesch. des gr. Romans," in Rhein. Mus., 1873, vol. xxviii. (N. F. ); E. Rohde, "Ueber gr. Novellendichtung," in Versamml. deutscher Philologen, 1875 ; Id., Der gr. Roman u. seine Vorläufer (Leipsic, 1876, 8vo) ; J. Wimmer, "Dergr. Roman," in Blätter f. d. bayer. Gymn., 1877) ; "Greek Romances," in For. Qttar. Rev., Nov. 1829 ; "Early Greek Romances," in Blachrood's Mag., July 1843 ; S. Baring Gould, ' ' Early Christian Greek Romances, " in Contemp. Rev., Oct. 1877 ; Chardon de la Rochette, "Notice sur les romans grecs," in Mélanges (Paris, 1812, vol. ii.) ; Struve, "Romans et nouvelles chez les grecs," in Journal gén. de l'Instr. Publ., 13th Aug., 17th Sept., 1835 ; V. Chauvin, Les romanciers grecs et latins (1864, sm. 8vo); A. Chassang, Hist, du roman dans Vantiq. grec. ct lat. (1862, sm. 8vo); P. D. Huet, De orig. fab. rom. (Hague, 1682); P. Paciaudi, De Libris Eroticis Antiquorum (Leipsic, 1803, 8vo); H. Paldamus, Romische Erotik (Greifswald, 1833, 8vo).

(b) Pseudo-Classical Works.

The literature of the Middle Ages recognized three great epic cycles, distinctly defined by Jean Bodel (13th century) in his Chanson des Saisnes (i.e., Saxons) :

" Ne sont que troi materes, a nul homme entendant— De France, de Bretaigne, et de Rome la Grant; Et de ces troi materes n'i a nule semblant."

Under " Eome la Grant" were comprehended the stories of Troy and the Trojans, iEneas, Alexander the Great, Julius Cassar, Judas Maccabasus, <fcc, from Latin sources, —that is to say, the whole ancient world seen through the language of Rome.

The romances derived from antiquity may be arranged in three classes—(1) those which were believed to be direct reproductions, such as Eneas, Thebes, Cesar, and the Roman de Troie, whose authors acknowledged indebted- . ness, after their fashion, to Virgil, Statius, Dares Phrygius, Dictys Cretensis, &c.; (2) those based upon ancient histories not previously versified,—for example, the legend of Alexander from Quintus Curtius and the Pseudo-Cal listhenes; (3) those which merely reproduce the names of antiquity and nothing else, such as Athis et Profilias, Ypomedon, and Protesilaus.

1. The chief of the first class was the Roman de Troie, Legend which exercised greater influence in its day and for cen- of Tr°y-turies after its appearance than any other work of the same order. Just as the chansons de geste of the 10th century were the direct ancestors of the prose romances which afterwards spread throughout Europe, so, even before the novels of Heliodorus and Achilles Tatius, there were quasi-histories which reproduced in prose, with more or less exactness, the narratives of epic poetry. Among these nothing has ever equalled in vitality the tale of the two sieges and capture of Troy, and the subsequent destinies of the Trojan and Greek heroes. "It would require a large volume," says Grote (History of Greece, i. p. 386), " to convey any tolerable idea of the vast extent and expansion of this interesting fable, first handled by so many poets, epic, lyric, and tragic, with their endless addi-tions, transformations, and contradictions, then purged and recast by historical inquirers, who, under colour of setting aside the exaggeration of the poets, introduced a new vein of prosaic invention." Long previous to the 'HpotKos of Philostratus (2d century) the Trojan War had been the subject of many a prose fiction dignified with the title of history; but to remodel the whole story almost in the shape of annals, and to give a minute personal description of the persons and characters of the principal actors, were ideas which belonged to an artificial stage of literature. This task was commenced by PHILOSTRATUS (q.v.), whose 'HpojtKos bears ample traces of having been compiled from a number of current figments. Philostratus, however, only pictures several characters and a few isolated scenes. His method was subsequently followed in a more complete fashion by two anonymous writers, who either borrowed from him or from a more ancient source common to all three. A spurious history, professing to give the chief incidents of the siege, and said to have been written by Dictys of Crete, a follower of Idomeneus, was known as early as the time of iElian, and has been largely quoted by the Byzantine chroniclers. This was translated into Latin prose at an early period under the title of Dictyos Cretensis de Bella Trojano libri VI. With Dictys is always associated Dares, a pseudo-historian of more recent' date. Old Greek writers mention an account of the destruction of the city earlier than the Homeric poems, and also in the time of /Elian this Iliad of Dares, priest of Hephaestus at Troy, was believed to exist. Nothing has since been heard of it; but an unknown Latin writer living between 400 and 600 took advantage of the tradition to compile what he styled Daretis Phrygii de Excidio Trojx Historia. It is in prose, and professes to be translated from an old Greek manuscript. Of the two works that of Dares is the later, and is inferior to Dictys. The matter-of-fact form of narration recalls the poem of Quintus Smyrnaeus. Both compilations lack literary merit; the gods and every-thing supernatural are suppressed; even the heroes are degraded. The long success, however, of the two works distinguishes them above all apocryphal writings, and they occupy an important position in literary history on account of the impetus they gave to the diffusion of the Troy legend throughout western Europe. The Byzantine writers from the 7th to the 12th century exalted Dictys as a first-class authority, with whom Homer was only to be con-trasted as an inventor of fables. Western people preferred Dares, because his history was shorter, and because, favour-ing the Trojans, he flattered the vanity of those who be-lieved that people to have been their ancestors. Many MSS. of both writers were contained in old libraries; and they were translated into nearly every language and turned into verse. In 1272 a monk of Corbie translated "sans rime L'Estoire de Troiens et de Troie [de Dares] du Latin en Boumans mot a mot" because the Roman de Troie (to be mentioned lower down) was too long. Geoffrey of Waterford put Dares into French prose; and the British Museum possesses three Welsh MS. translations of the same author,—works indeed of a much later period.

We know that the taste for Greek letters was never entirely lost in western Europe. Eginhard tells how Charlemagne understood Greek and how he encouraged the study. Alcuin states, with pardonable pride, that the library at York contained " Grascia vel quidquid trans-misit clara Latinis," which may, however, simply refer to Latin translations. Under any circumstances, however, this knowledge must have been confined to a few. It was through Latin that the Middle Ages knew the ancient world, and in that language read the Pseudo-Dares and Dictys, the Fables of /Esop, and the Iliad of Homer. Through these translations came many of the traces of Greek literature which occur in the fabliaux and romances. How numerous these traces were in the Arthurian cycle will be pointed out. The tale of the Dog of Montargis, familiar to readers of Milles et Amys (Carolingian cycle), is derived from Plutarch. Cerberus may be found in the Chanson dAntioche ; the story of Tarquin in the chanson de geste Moniage Guillaume; the judgment of Paris in Foulkes de Candie ; and Cupid and Psyche in the romance of Parten-opex of Blois.

For a thousand years the myth of descent from the dispersed heroes of the conquered Trojan race was a sacred literary tradition throughout western Europe, of which a possible survival still remains in the popular phrase which speaks of a generous and courageous fellow as a Trojan. The classical traditions of extensive colonization subsequent to the Trojan War were adopted by Western nations at a very early date. The first Franco-Latin chroniclers con-sidered it a patriotic duty to trace their history to the same origin as that of Rome, as told by the Latin poets of the Augustan era ; and in the middle of the 7th century Fredegarius Scholasticus (Rer. Gall. Script., ii. 461) relates how one party of the Trojans settled between the Bhine, the Danube, and the sea. In a charter of Dagobert occurs the statement, " ex nobilissimo et antiquo Trojanorum reliquiarum sanguine nati." The fact is repeated b] chroniclers and panegyrical writers, who also considereo. the History of Troy by Dares to be the first of national books. Succeeding kings imitated their predecessors in giving official sanction to their legendary origin : Charles the Bald, in a charter, uses almost the same words as Dagobert—" ex prasclaro et antiquo Trojanorum sanguine nati." In England a similar tradition had been early formulated, as appears from the Bseudo-Nennius (put together between the 7th and 9th centuries) and Geoffrey of Monmouth. Otto Frisingensis (12th century) and other German chroniclers repeat the myth, and the apocryphal hypothesis is echoed in Scandinavian sagas.

In the 11th century the tale of Troy became the theme of Neo-Latin verse. About 1050 a monk named Bernard wrote De Excidio Trojse, and in the middle of the 12th century Simon Chèvre d'Or followed with another poem on the fall of the city and the adventures of ./Eneas, blend-ing the Homeric and Yirgilian records. We now come to a work on the same subject in a modern language, which in its own day and for centuries afterwards exercised an extraordinary influence throughout Europe. Benoît de Benoît's Sainte-More, the Anglo-Norman trouvère wrho wrote 'mlïoman verse Chroniques des Ducs de Normandie, composed inde Tr<m England, under the eyes of Henry IL, about the year 1184 a poem in 30,000 lines entitled Roman de Troie. It forms a true Trojan cycle and embraces the entire heroic history of Hellas. The introduction relates the story of the Argo-nauts, and the last 2680 verses are devoted to the return of the Greek chiefs and the wanderings of Ulysses. With no fear of chronological discrepancy before his eyes, Benoît reproduces the manners of his own times, and builds up a complete museum of the 12th century,—its arts, costumes, manufactures, architecture, arms, and even religious terms. Women are repeatedly introduced in unwarranted situations ; they are spectators of all combats. The idea of personal beauty is different from that of the old Greeks ; by Benoît good-humour, as well as health and strength, is held to be one of its chief characteristics. The love-pictures are another addition of the modern writer. We find traces of the Odyssey of Homer and the trilogy of /Eschylus as well as of Ovid and Virgil. The author speaks enthusiastically of Homer, but his chief source of information was the pseudo-annals of Dictys and Dares, more especially the latter, augmented by his own imagina-tion and the spirit of the age. It is to Benoît alone that the honour of poetic invention is due, and in spite of its obligation for a groundwork to Dictys and Dares we may justly consider the Roman de Troie as an original work. From this source subsequent writers drew their notions of Troy, mostly without naming their authority and generally without even knowing his name. This is the chef d'oeuvre of the pseudo-classical cycle of romances: it shows the most lofty conception, and in it poetical imagination has the freest and most lively play. The Roman de Troie was extremely popular. When Benoît, by reason of his lengthi-ness, failed to please, the Latin version of Guido revived general interest. The story passed through every country of Europe, first in verse and then as a prose fiction, and portions of it furnished matter for the genius of Boccaccio, Chaucer, and Shakespeare.

The first work inspired by the success of the Roman de Imita-Troie was the De bello Trojano of Joseph of Exeter, in sixtions of books, a genuine poem of no little merit, written soon after Benoît-Benoît's work or about the years 1187-88. It was directly drawn from the pseudo-annalists, but the influence of Benoît was considerable. Another was the Troilus of Albert of Stade (1249), a version of Dares, in verse, brought back to all its severity and affected realism. But these Latin works can only be associated indirectly with Benoît, who had closer imitators in Germany at an early period. Herbort von Fritslar reproduced the French text in his Lied von Troye (early 13th century), as did also Konrad von Wiirtzburg (d. 1287) in his Buck von Troye of 40,000 verses. To the like source may be traced a poem of 30,000 verses on the same subject by Wolfram von Eschenbach, still unpublished. The Low Countries were not behind Germany. A dozen chansons de geste were translated into Flemish towards the middle of the 13th _century ; and Jacob von Maerlant, an illustrious poet, re-produced Benoît, and did not omit to acknowledge the authorship. The fame of the romance travelled to the north, and in various forms the Norse or Icelandic Tro-Jurnanna Saga acquired a distinctly local colour.

In Italy Guido délie Colonne, a Sicilian, commenced in 1270 and finished in 1287 a prose Historia Trojana. Although Guido knew some Greek, he did not translate Dictys and Dares, as some MSS. affirm, but reproduced the Roman de Troie of Benoît, and so closely as to copy the errors of the latter and to give the name of Peleus to Pelias, Jason's uncle. As the debt was entirely un-acknowledged, Benoît at last came to be considered the imitator of Guido. The original is generally abridged, and the vivacity and poetry of the Anglo-Norman trouvère disappear in a dry version. The immense popularity of Guido's work is shown by the large number of exist-ing MSS. The French Bibliothèque Nationale possesses eighteen codices of Guido to thirteen of Benoît, while at the British Museum the proportion is ten to two. Guido's History was translated into German about 1392 by Hans Mair of Nordlingen. Two Italian translations, by Antonio Cessi (1324) and by Bellebuoni (1333), are still preserved in MS. at Florence. The book passed the seas, and in the 14th and the commencement of the 15th century four ver-sions appeared in England and Scotland. The best known is the Troy Book of Lydgate, who had both French and Latin texts before him. An earlier and anonymous render-ing exists at Oxford. There is the Gest Historiale of the Destruction of Troy (Early Eng. Text Soc, 1869), also an earlier Scottish version by Barbour. The invention of printing gave fresh impetus to the spread of Guido's work. The first book printed in English was a translation by Caxton from the French of Baoul Lefèvre, issued by the foreign press of Caxton about 1474. Lefèvre's own version appeared from the same press about the same time and was the first book printed in the French language. There were also translations into Italian, Spanish, High German, Low Saxon, Dutch, and Danish ; Guido had even a Flemish and a Bohemian dress. But not one of these translators even suspected that the writer was only a feeble repre-sentative of an old trouvère.

Thus far we have only considered works more or less closely imitated from the original. Boccaccio, passing by the earlier tales, took one original incident from Benoît, the love of Troilus and the treachery of Briseida, and composed Filostrato, a touching story. This was borrowed by Chaucer about 1360 for his Boke of Troilus and Cresside, and also by Shakespeare for his Troilus and Cressida (1609). One reason why the Bound Table stories of the 12th and 13th centuries had a never-ceasing charm for readers of the two following centuries was that they were constantly being re-edited to suit the changing taste. The Roman de Troie experienced the same fate. By the 13th century it was translated into prose and worked up in those enormou" compilations, such as the Mer des His-toires, &c, in which the Middle Ages studied antiquity. It reappeared in the religious dramas called Mysteries. Jacques Millet, who produced La Destruction de Troie la Grande between 1452 and 1454, merely added vulgar real-ism to the original. Writers of chap-books borrowed the story, which is again found on the stage in Antoine de Montchrestien's tragedy of Hector (1603)—a last echo of the influence of Benoît.

Although the Troie reveals the greatest power of imagination, Adapta-and was the most influential and important, of these adaptations tions of of ancient classical stories, it was not the earliest of them. It other was preceded by a Roman oVEneas, written, like the Roman de Troie, Roman by an Anglo Norman at the court of Henry II., a contemporary epics, of Giraldus Cambrensis and John of Salisbury. There is, indeed, every reason to believe that the author was Benoît de Sainte-More himself. The work is a tolerably close reproduction of the Hineid, some passages being faithfully translated and others elaborated. But the religious character of Yirgil's work is wanting, as well as the spirit of Roman greatness shadowed forth in the ancient epic. Long extracts from the Eneas have been published by M. Pey (Paris, 1856), but it has not yet been printed in full. Soon after its appearance it was translated with great fidelity into German by Heinrich von Veldeke. The Roman de Thebes is an imitation of the Thebais of Statius, with the same general characteristics as the Eneas. In each case the trouvère found a Latin model on which to superimpose an elaborate structure of his own. In each case also the original is abridged, while all polish is effaced, and the pagan marvels replaced by others more familiar to contemporary readers. The change is specially visible in matters of religion. Lydgate translated the Thebes, and Chaucer used the romance in his Canterbury Tales. It was composed after the Troie by another pen than that of Benoît. Lucan's Pharsalia was the last of the great Roman epics to be appropriated. Li Romanz de Julius Cesar by Jacques de Forez, of which only one MS. exists, dated 1280, is from this source. It adheres to Lucan's text with more fidelity than the other adaptations ; but the general intention is changed. While the classic poem ends in the middle of the 10th book, Jacques de Forez conducts Ciesar back to Rome. These romances—Eneas, Thebes, and J. Cesar—are mere translations, and are, indeed, our first renderings of Virgil, Statius, and Lucan in modern dialects. But the trouvères rearranged and transformed their originals. Fairies, magic, and enchanters, the novel position of women, the sentiments of Christianity, and the spirit of chivalry are strangely at variance with the stories familiar to us in the language of im-perial Rome. The influence of new ideas derived from the crusades and the East is plainly visible. Some of the marvels are found in William of Malmesbury, which indicates that they were of popular acceptation.





It is a remarkable fact that, while the origines of the pseudo- Second-classical romances are earlier than any of the others, the prose re- ary re-compositions are of later construction than almost all those we are produc-about to consider. The Recueil des Histoires de Troyes, Hercule, tions. Jason, Œdipns, Alexandre, Virgilius, &c, belong to the second half of the 15th century. They have little interest and intrinsic merit, but their immediate originals exercised an extraordinary in-fluence on the literature of the Middle Ages, an influence which appears even in the romances of other cycles and in those composed in prose at an earlier date than those we are now discussing.

Recueil des Histoires de Troyes was "composé par vénérable homme Raoul le Feure prestre chappellain de mon très redoubté seigneur monseigneur le due Phelippe de Bourgoingne en l'an de grace 1464," but probably printed in 1474 by Caxton or Colard Mansion at Bruges. It is in three books, of which the first deals with the story of Jupiter and Saturn, the origin of the Trojans, the feats of Perseus, and the first achievements of Hercules ; the second book is wholly taken up with the "prouesses du fort Herculez " ; the third, " traictant de la generalle destruction de Troyes qui vint a l'ocasion du rauissement de dame Helaine," is little else than a translation of that portion of Guido délie Colonne which relates to Priam and his sons. Two MSS. of the Recueil in the Bibliothèque Nationale wrongly attribute the work to Guillaume Fillastre, a voluminous author, and predecessor of Lefèvre as secre-tary to the duke. Another codex in the same library, Histoire ancienne de Thebes et de Troyes, is partly taken from Orosius. The Bibliothèque Nationale possesses an unpublished Histoire des Troyens et des Théhains jusqu'à la mort de Turnus, d'après Orosc, Ovialc et Raoul Lefebre (early 16th century), and the British Museum a Latin history of Troy dated 1403.

Hercules.—The end of the first and the whole of the second book of the Recueil are reproduced in Les prouesses et vaillances da preux Hercule (Paris, 1500), with the addition of a prologue and the genealogy of the champion. The character and adventures of Hercules were of a nature to attract the fancy of a romancist. His labours are represented as having been performed in honour of a Bœotian princess ; Pluto is a king dwelling in a dismal castle ; the Fates are duennas watching Proserpine ; the entrance to Pluto's castle is watched by the giant Cerberus. Hercules conquers Spain and takes Merida from Geryon. The book is translated into English as Hercules of Greece (n.d.). The marquis de Tillena took from the same source his prose Libro de los Trabajos de Hercules (Zamora, 1498), and Fernandez de Heredia wrote Trabajos de Hercules (1682), also in prose. Le Fatiche d'Ercole (1475) is a romance in poetic prose by Pietro Bassi, and the Lodeci Travagli di Ercole (1544), a poem by J. Perillos.

Jason.—Les fais etprouesses du noble et vaillant chevalier Jason was composed in the middle of the 15th century by Lefevre on the basis of Benoit, and presented to Philip of Burgundy, founder of the order of the Toison d'Or. Jason is shown as a foremost figure in tournaments, overthrowing all competitors at one held by the king of Boeotia to celebrate the knighting of his son Hercules. The two become staunch friends and attend the marriage ceremony of Hippodamia. Centaurs interrupt and are exterminated by Jason. He performs other knightly exploits, and on his return is malici-ously sent by his uncle Peleus (Pelias) on the Argonautic expedition. The narrative of the journey to Lemnos and Cdlchos, the love of Medea, and the episode of the Golden Fleece follows the classical traditions. When Jason returns to the country of the Myrmidons, Medea by enchantment restores the old king to youth and brings about the death of Peleus. For this last good deed Medea is banished, with Jason's consent, and is carried off by four dragons. She soars long over Greece before she is able to find her lover; at length she discovers that he is going to wed the princess of Corinth. She descends amid thunder and lightning, kills the two children she bore to Jason, and allows her attendant dragons to destroy with fire Corinth and all its inhabitants. She then inveigles the old Egeus, king of Athens, into marriage, but is banished upon suspicion of attempting to poison her new son-in-law Theseus. Meeting with Jason, who had escaped the burning of Corinth, she becomes reconciled to him, and, abjuring magic, on the death of Eson becomes a good wife and queen. The manners and senti-ments of the 15th century are made to harmonize with the classical legends after the fashion of the Italian pre - Raphaelite painters, who equipped Jewish warriors with knightly lance and armour. The story is well told ; the digressions are few ; and there are many touches of domestic life and natural sympathy. The first edition is believed to have been printed at Bruges in 1474 ; the type is the same as that used in the first edition of the Recueil. Caxton translated the book at the command of the duchess of Burgundy. A Dutch translation appeared at Haarlem in 1495. M. Paulin Paris doubts whether the romance was written by Lefevre, whose authorship is distinctly asserted by Caxton. Montfaucon refers to a MS. by Guido dello Colonne, Historia Medea} et Jasonis (unpublished). There is a Histoire de la Thoison d'Or (1516) by Guillaume Fillastre, written about 1440-50.

Oedipus. —A kind of introduction to the Recueil is Le Roman d'GSdipus, Fils de Layus (n.d.), written in the 15th century by an unknown pen. The story follows the fable told by the Greek poets, adapted, of course, to the taste and habits of later times. The sphinx is drawn as a giant of great subtlety and ferocity.

2. The wonders revealed through the Asiatic expedition of Alexander gave rise to a remarkable development of marvelious jn historical composition. The histories of
Onesicritus, Aristobulus, and Clitarchus, themselves members of the expedition, were so full of unheard-of things that they soon fell into disrepute. Callisthenes, another companion of Alexander, also wrote an account, which is lost, but his name remains connected with a spurious work in which were crystallized all the fabulous tales of the conqueror. The life of Alexander had every quality to appeal to the imagination. His marvellous career, his genius as a soldier and ruler, the beauty of his person, his early death, were subjects for legend almost in his own day; and a cloud of mythical story soon floated round his memory. Quintus Curtius, who drew from some of these suspicious sources, is a more critical authority, though he allowed rhetorical fancy to embellish his narration. It is a great fall from the Latin historian to the Pseudo-Callisthenes. The work we possess under the latter title represents the second stage of the Alexander myth. Some of the MSS. attribute it to Aristotle, Ptolemy, and jEsop, as well as to Callisthenes,—all with equal verisimilitude. To reconstruct the true from the spurious work is an im-possible task after the increased vogue given to the latter by the re-opening of the East to Europe by the Romans, when all the traditions became remoulded in the form they now possess. Among the histories separate from Pseudo-Callisthenes and subsequent to Quintus Curtius is an Itinerarium Alexandri, in Latin, but of Greek origin, which is little else than an amplification of the apocryphal letter of Alexander to Aristotle. It is dedicated to Con-stans, son of the emperor Constantine. Similarities be-tween the Itinerarium. and the Latin version of Pseudo-Callisthenes prove that the stories were current in the 4th century, and may have emanated from the same source; but, while the Itinerarium is inferior in authority to Quintus Curtius, it is less a collection of mere fables than is Callisthenes. The Greek text of the latter is supposed to have been written in Alexandria at the commencement of the third century, and to have been translated into Latin by Julius Valerius before 340. The translation was abridged in Latin some time before the 9th century. Much of the work is a running travesty of the true history of the conqueror. The first book deals with his birth and early exploits. The trace of Alexandrian influence is to be found in the pretence that his actual father was Nec-tanebus, a fugitive king of Egypt. The latter was a great magician, able, by operating upon waxen figures of the armies and ships of his enemies, to obtain complete power over their real actions. He was obliged, however, to fly to Pella, where he established himself as a doctor and was visited by Queen Olympias to get advice upon her continued sterility. He promised that Jupiter Ammon should perform the cure in the shape of a dragon. To make quite sure Nectanebus himself took the place of the animal, and nine months afterwards Philip became the father of the future Alexander. At first there was some unpleasant-ness, but a reappearance of the uragon convinced every-body that the infant really was the son of a god, so that the putative father could no longer object. Alexander was small and somewhat deformed, but of great courage and intelligence. He was educated under the supervision of Nectanebus, who at last died through a fall into a pit, into which he had been playfully pushed by his royal pupil. The second book continues the various conquests, and the third contains the victory over Porus, the relations with the Brahmans, the letter to Aristotle on the wonders of India, the histories of Candaces and the Amazons, the letter to Olympias on the marvels of Further Asia, and lastly the account of Alexander's death in Babylon.

Callisthenes was translated into Syriac and Armenian in the 5th century. A second Latin abridgment is known as Historia de Prseliis. The letter from Alexander to Aristotle on the marvels of India, the correspondence between the king and the wise Brahman Dindimus, and De Gentibus Indice, ascribed to Palladius, are different parts of the same legend. The myth had a wider circulation than any of the others we have yet dealt with, and the East contributed its share as well as the West. Persians and Arabs told the deeds of Iskander; and Firdousi made use of the story in the Shah-Namah. Another early Persian poet, Nizami, made the story specially his own. The crusaders brought back fresh developments; Gog and Magog (partly Arab and partly Greek) and some Jewish stories were then added. In the 11th century Simeon Seth, protovestiarius at the Byzantine court, translated the fabulous history from the Persian back into Greek. In the following century was built up the Geste d'Alexandre by the successive labours of Lambert le Cort, Alexandre Bernai, Jehan le Nevelais, Gautier de Cambrai, Pierre de Saint-Cloud, Brisebarre, &c. Alexander becomes then a knightly king, surrounded by his twelve paladins. Bernai says that the foundation was Latin (? Valerius or some other Latin version of Pseudo-Callisthenes):

"TJn clerc de Casteldun, Lambert li Cors 1'escrit, Qui del Latin le traist, et en Roman le mit."

The same origin is to be sought for the Alexander myths found in Renart le Bestournê and the Speculum Historicité of Vincentius Bellovaeensis. Quintus Curtius was largely used for the Alexandras (c. 1176-1202) of Gaultier de Châtillon. It was the theme of poetry in all European languages : six or seven German poets dealt with the subject, and it may be read in English, Spanish, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, Flemish, and Bohemian.

Towards the close of the 15th century an anonymous writer worked up the subject into a prose romance, L'histoire du noble et vaillant roy Alixandre le Grant (1506), in which the Historia de Prœliis is followed with tolerable exactness. After an account of the ancient history of Macedonia and of the intrigue of Nectanebus we are told how Philip dies, and how Alexander subdues Borne and receives tribute from all European nations. He then makes his Persian expedition; the Indian campaign gives occasion to descriptions of all kinds of wonders. The conqueror visits a cannibal kingdom and finds many marvels in the palace of Porus, among them a vine with golden branches, emerald leaves, and fruit of other precious stones. In one country he meets with women, who, after burial in the winter, become alive again in the spring full of youth and beauty. Having reached the ends of the earth and con-quered all nations, he aspires to the dominion of the air. He obtains a magic glass cage, yoked with eight griffins, flies through the clouds, and, thanks to enchanters knowing the language of birds, gets information as to their manners and customs, and ultimately receives their submission. The excessive heat of the upper regions compels him to descend, and he next visits the bottom of the sea in a kind of diving-bell. The fish crowd round him and pay hom-age. Alexander returns to Babylon, is crowned with much pomp, and mass is celebrated. He dies by poison soon afterwards.

The Vœux du Paon and Bestor du Paon are chansons de geste
attached to the Alexander cycle, to which also belongs Florimont,
a poem by Aimé de Varennes, said to have been written in 1188.
Florimont was a son of the duke of Albania and father of Philip
of Macedon by the heiress of the latter country. This poem gave
rise to two prose romances—La congueste de Grèce faicte par Philippe
de Madien, by Perrinet du Pin, first printed in 1527, and Histoire
du roi Florimond (1528).

3. We now come to the third order of romances eluded in the cycle of "Rome la Grant," or those which witn, merely reproduce the names of antiquity. The enchanter
rnpvclv
classical Virgil is the most famous of those who have given rise to names, prose works, and what passes under his name is less a romance than a collection of popular tales, many of Eastern derivation. Among romances in verse we have Eraclès, Anseys de Carthage, Cléomadès, Athis et Profilias, Prot'e-silaus, and Ypomédon. The first part of Athis et Profilias, by Alexandre de Bernai (latter part of 12th century), is adapted from the tale of the two merchants in the Disciplina Clericalis of Bedro Alfonso, and is the source of Boccaccio's " Tito e Gisippo " (Decam., x. 8). In Ypomé-don, written by Hue of Botelande about 1185, most of the characters are named from the Thebais. As early as the year 1210 we find a rhymed translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses in German by Albrecht von Halberstadt. From Ovid is taken the story of Fyramus and Thisbe in Chaucer's Legend of Good Women, which is the subject of a prose work in Italian, Piramo e Tisbe (Milan, s.a.). The episode of Orpheus and Eurydice furnished the plot of the poetical Histoire d'Orphée of Guillaume de Machault (d. 1370) and the English Sir Orphes. The tale of Theseus was handled by Boccaccio and supplied the title and names to the prose romance Histoire du chevalier Theseus de Coulogne (1534). The Bible as well as the classics was laid under contribution. Gaultier de Belleperche wrote a metrical Roman de Judas Machabée about the year 1240, of which a prose reproduction is Les chroniques du prince Judas Machabeus, l'un des neufs preux, et aussi de ses quatres frères (Paris, 1514).

The Enchanter Virgil.—After turning the heroes of antiquity The eu-into knights-errant, it was a simple task to transform ancient poets chanter and philosophers into necromancers ; and Virgil and Aristotle be- Virgil, came popularly famous, not for poetry and science, but for their supposed knowledge of the black art. One of the earliest references to the magical skill of Virgil occurs in a letter of the chancellor Conrad (1194), reproduced by Arnold of Lübeck in the continua-tion of the Chronicon Slavorum of Helmold. John of Salisbury alludes to the brazen fly fabricated by Virgil ; Hélinand (d. 1227) speaks of similar marvels in a work from which Vincentius Bellovaeensis has borrowed ; and Gervase of Tilbury, in his Otia Im-perialia (1212), and Alexander Neckham (d. 1217), in De Natura Berum, have reproduced these traditions, with idditions. German and French poets did not overlook this accessory to their répertoire. The Soman de Cléomadès of Adenez (12th century) and the Image du Monde, an encyclopaedic poem of Gauthier do Metz (13th century), contain numerous references to the prodigies of the en-chanter. Reynard the Fox informs King Lion that he had from the wise Virgil a quantity of valuable receipts. He also plays a considerable part in the popular folk-tale The Seven Wise Masters, and appears in the Gesta Romanorum and that curious guide-book for pilgrims, the Mirabilia Bornas. He is to be found in Gower's Confessio Amantis and in Lydgate's Bochas. A Spanish romance, Vergilios, is included by E. de Ochoa in his Tesoro (Paris, 1838), and Juan Ruiz, archpriest of Hita (d. 1351), has also written a poem on the subject. Many of the tales of magic throughout Europe "were referred to Virgil, and gradually developed into a completely new life, strangely different from that of the real hero. They were collected in French under the title of Les Faits Mer-veilleux de Virgule (c. 1499), a quarto chapbook of ten pages, which became extremely popular, and. was printed, with more or less additional matter, in all languages. We are told how Virgil be-guiled the devil at a very early age, in the same fashion as the fisherman used the jinn in the Arabian Nights when he got him to re-enter Solomon's casket. Another reproduction of a widely spread tale was that of the lady who kept Virgil suspended in a basket. To revenge the affront the magician extinguished all the fires in the city, and no one could rekindle them without subjecting the lady to an ordeal highly offensive to her modesty. Virgil made for the emperor a castle in which he could see and hear every-thing done or said in Rome, an ever-blooming orchard, statues to preserve the safety of the city, and a lamp to supply light to it. He abducted the soldan's daughter, and built for her the city of Naples upon a secure foundation of eggs. At last, having performed many extraordinary things, he knew that his time was come. In order to escape the common lot he placed all his treasures in a castle defended by images unceasingly wielding iron flails, and directed his confidential servant to hew him in pieces, which he was to salt and place in a barrel in the cellar, under which a lamp was to be kept burning. The servant was assured that after seven days his master would revive a young man. The directions were carried out; but the emperor, missing his medicine-man, forced the servant to divulge the secret and to quiet the whirling flails. The emperor and his retinue entered the castle and at last found the mangled corpse. In his wrath he slew the servant, whereupon a little naked child ran thrice round the barrel, crying, "Cursed be the hour that ye ever came here," and vanished.

Literature.—On the subject generally, see A. Chassang, Histoire du roman dans l'antiquité, 1862 ; P. Paris, Les MSS. François de la Bibl. du Roi, Paris, 1835-48, 7 vols. ; H. L. D. Ward, Cat. of Romances in the Dep. of MSS., British Museum, 1883 ; E. Du Méril, Preface to Flore et Blancheflor, 1856 ; Egger, Hellén-isme en France, 1S69. The Troy legend is dealt with in the elaborate work of A. Joly, Benoît de Sainte-More et le Roman de Troie, 1870-71, 2 vols. ; G. Körting, Der altfranz. Roman de Troie, 18S3 ; F. Settegast, Benoit de Ste-More, Breslau, 1876 ; Frominann, Herbort v. Fritzlar u. Benoit de Ste-More, Stuttgart, 1857 ; R. Jäckel, Dares Phrygius u. Benoit de Ste-More, Breslau, 1875 ; E. Juste, Sur l'origine^ des poèmes attrib. à Homère et sur les cycles épiques de l'antiq. et du Moyen-ge, Brussels, 1849 ; J. A. Fuchs, De varietatefabularum Troicarum-quœstiones, Cologne, 1830 ; H. Dünger, Die Sage vom trojan. Kriege, Leipsic, 1869 ; G. Körting, Dictys u. Dares, Halle, 1874 ; H. Dunger, Dictys Septimius, Dresden, 1878 ; L. Havet, "Sur ia date du Dictys de Septimius " (Rev. dePhilol., 1878); F. Meister, "Zur Ephem. belli Troiani von Dictys" (Philologus, 1879) ; T. Mommsen, "Zu Dictys" (Hermes, 1876); E. Rohde, "Zu Dictys Cretensis" (Philologus, 1S73) ; R. Barth, Guido de Columna, Leipsic, 1877 ; A. Mussafla, "Sulle versione Italiane délia Storia Troiana" (Sitz. d. k. Akad. Wien, 1871, vol. lxvii.), and "Ueber d. Span. Versionen" (ib., 1871, vol. lxïx.); Pey, Essai sur U romans d'Eneas, 1856. The Alexander legend is treated by J. Zacher, Pseudo- Callisthenes, Halle, 1867 ; J. Berger de Xivrey, ' ' Sur Pseudo-Callis tlienes " (Notices et Extracts, xiii., 1838) ; A. Westennann, De Callisth'ene, 1838-42, 4 parts ; E. Talbot, Sur la légende d'Alexandre dans les romans français, 1S50; Florian
2 The Irish apostle to Carinthia, St Virgilius, bishop of Salzburg (d. 784), who held original views on the subject of antipodes, may have been the real eponym of the legend. Naples was a ceutre for pseudo-Virgilian stories.

Frocheur, "Histoire romanesque d'Alexandre" (Messager des Sc. Hist, Ghent, 1847) ; H. Michelant, Introduction to Li Romans d'Alexandre, Stuttgart, 1840 ; J. Maehly, "Zur Alexandersage " (Z. f. deutsche Philol., iii., 1871); Rbmheld, DU Alexandersage, Hersfeld, 1878; W. Wackernagel, " Zur Alexandersage " (Z. f. deutsche Phil., i., 1869) ; Dem. P. de Gobdelas, Hist. d'Alexandre suivant les écrits orientaux, Warsaw, 1822 ; F. Spiegel, Die Alexandersage bei den Orientalen, Leipsic, 1851 ; L. Donath, Die Alexandersage im Talmud u. Midrash, Fulda, 1873. For the Virgil myth see D. Comparetti, Virgilio nel Medio Evo, Leghorn, 1872, 2 YOIS. ; W. J. Thorns, Early Eng. Prose Romances, 1S53, 8 vols. ; G. Brunet, Les faitz merveilleux de Virgile, Geneva, 1867 ; E. Duméril, "Virgile enchanteur" (Mélanges Arch., 1850) ; Gervase of Tilbury, Otia Imper., ed. Liebrecht, 1856 ; P. Schwubbe, Virgiliusper mediam œtatem, Paderborn, 1852 ; Siebenhauer, Defabulis qum media œtate de Virgilio circula/., Berlin, 1837 ; J. G. T. Graesse, Beitrage zur Litt. u. Sage des Mittelalters, 1850 ; Bartsch, "Gedicht auf d. Zaub. Virgil" (Pfeiffer's Germania, iv., 1859) ; F. Liobreeht, " Der Zauberer Virgilius " (ib., x., 1865); K. L. Roth, " Ueber d. Zaub. Virgilius (ib., iv., 1859); W. Victor, "Der Ursprung der Virgilsage " (Zeit. f. rom". Phil., i., 1877). For Ovid see K. Bartsch, Albrecht v. HaWerstadt u. Qvid im Mittelalter, Quedlinburg, 1861.

II.—MEDIEVAL ROMANCE.

(a) Arthurian Cycle.

Origines. The oldest and certainly the most important of the cycles of mediaeval romance is that which passes under the name of King Arthur, or of the Round Table. The names, characters, and actions of its heroes have permeated modern literature throughout Europe ; yet so little do we know concerning the origines and the first authors of the tales which form the body of Arthurian romance that there are few subjects in literary history more obscure and undefined. It can only be said with assurance that from about the year 1150 several poems were composed by minstrels (a class of men recruited from all ranks of society) upon incidents and personages familiar to readers of what is called the Morte Arthur, a compilation of the second half of the 13th century. The Morte Arthur was not originally so called, and it was not a direct compilation from the ballads of the 12th century, but seems rather to have been a mere unskilful reduction into a single corpus of some five or six prose romances which had already grown out of the poems, and each of which professed to relate the adventures of nearly the same set of heroes. The first appearance of these stories in prose compositions is here our chief concern ; and it is, unfortunately, likewise our chief difficulty. The sources of information upon the subject are defective and vitiated to a singular degree; and the light thrown by the investigations of recent writers is frequently of the nature of cross-lights. The following attempt at constructing a brief literary history of the Arthurian romances is not offered as a complete analysis of the work which has been done, but as a sum-mary of facts and probabilities.

The Roman conquests in Spain, Gaul, and Britain imposed upon a large portion of the conquered peoples the necessity of using the Latin language, which thereby became, and for centuries remained, the medium of educated intercourse and the language of the towns and the centres of government in those countries. In common speech, naturally, it became depraved in course of time, and the pure lingua Latina of the high officials and the clergy existed side by side with the corrupt lingua Eornana of the Romanized people. The latter was, however, ignored by polite literature, and probably never appeared in a written form till it was used for political purposes on the occasion of the celebrated partition of Charlemagne's empire among his grandsons. We may say that the literature of romance begins with popular poetry of the 10th or 11th century; but, as its subject-matter was derived to some extent from the more respectable lingua Latina, we must go back a few centuries earlier to find the origines. When the people of Rome became acquainted with the civilization and literature of Greece they framed a fabu-lous history to connect themselves with the superior race, and the JEneid exhibits that pseudo-tradition in its most permanent and powerful embodiment. A similar desire affected the Romanized Britons, and we may confidently assume that before the end of the 3d century a poetical form had been given to the story of the Trojan Brutus who founded the kingdom of Britain, blended with some-thing of the real traditions of the Celtic race. No such form survives at present, but we may discern its traces and results in Nennius (sec. viii.-x.), Geoffrey of Monmouth (d. 1154), and in all the subsequent chronicles.

In the 11th century the Anglo-Saxons of England hadEthno-their old Germanic stories of Beowulf, Sigfrid, and theg™PUc Nibelungen; the Britons of the west enjoyed their Celtic j^g^. and Britanno-Celtic myths ; the Saxonized Britons of Wilt- ain, nth shire and elsewhere combined the legends of both the century, others; and the best educated men amongst the clergy had an acquaintance with Virgil, Ovid, and Statius. Here was a rich material for the imagination, and the invasion of the Normans brought a fructifying element. In France, Roman, Franco-German, Celto-Breton, and Scandinavian traditions were already intermingled; and the reintroduc-tion into Saxonized England, from the south, of Celtic myths nearly identical with those which the Anglo-Normans found in Wales before the end of the 11th century gave to the latter a fresh life and a distinct predominance over all the other traditions of the composite people. Hence arose the British cycle of romance, accepted partly as history, partly as fiction by the new people of Norman England. Bretons, Britons, Normans and French, the Saxonized Britons, the Franco-Gallicized Scandinavians, and the Dano-Saxons all found a common basis of amalga-mation, and it is no mere metaphor to say that the publi-cation of Geoffrey of Monmouth's fabulous chronicle formed a momentous era in the history of England.

When the Saxons entered Britain in the 5th century they found in the middle and the south a Romanized kingdom ruled by a monarch with a British or Cymric name. The vernacular tongue of Britain was then and for centuries afterwards much nearer in form to the Gaelic of Ireland and of western and northern Scotland, the Pictish of Scotland, and the Gaulish of France than the Cymric of Wales is now or was then. It was a long time before the Saxon conquests extended so far as to leave the Cymry or Welsh the sole distinct people of the original inhabitants of the country. In the meantime there had been con-flicts with the Pictish kings of the north, the Gaelic or Cambro-Gaelic kings of Strathclyde, and the princes of North and South Wales. Amongst their opposers the most successful and the most memorable was a prince or chief of Strathclyde, who is called by Nennius "Arthur dux bellorum," by the English " King Arthur," by the Welsh "the Emperor Arthur." After the departure of the Romans there were several independent monarchies or principalities in the island—that of the Romanized Britons occupying the centre, south, and south-east of the country; two Cymric principalities in Wales (North and South); the Cambro-Gaelic kingdom of Strathclyde, extending from the Clyde to Chester; the unmixed Gaels in the north-west of Scotland ; the Pictish kingdom in the north-east ; and a Scandinavian population between the Firth of Forth and Norwich. It is now settled by scholars that the Pictish speech was a dialect, like Gallic, Gaelic, and Cymric, of the common Celtic language; and in the early centuries of the Christian era the radical unity of all these tongues had not yet been effaced by the action of local varieties of pronunciation and arbitrary rules of orthography; consequently there was no such sentiment of national or racial distinction between the divisions of the Celtic race as is nowadays produced by political frontiers. The real Arthur, whoever he was, has been claimed by the Welsh, as their own man, a champion of the beaten Celts retiring westward to the mountain-fastnesses before the victorious Saxons. They have lost sight of the fact that there were always Cymry in Wales, who must have re-garded their brothers in Loegria (England) much in the same way as they did those of Strathclyde, namely, as kinsmen and allies sometimes, as fair game for attack and plunder more frequently. The struggle between the Celtic and Germanic race was a long one, and it can only have been after the power of the Romanized Britons of Loegria and of the men of Strathclyde was broken, in the battles to which we may attach the name of Arthur, that the tide of war reached Wales along with the British fugitives who crowded thither and to Brittany; hence the appearance of Roman names among the British warriors. It may be surmised that Arthur is not a name but a title given to a Strathclyde warrior, corresponding to the Latin imperator} The traces of Roman occupation and of Roman culture were not wholly effaced for many centuries in the west of England, and, besides the Latin quasi-historical writings attributed to Gildas and Nennius, there must have been something like a British Livy and a British Virgil in existence between the time of Constantine and that of the pseudo-classical compositions of Geoffrey of Monmouth and Joseph of Exeter. It is quite certain that the work we call by the name of Nennius did not furnish all the sub-ject-matter of Geoffrey's Historia, and the mysterious old volume which his friend William of Wallingford brought to him from Brittany about 1130 must have contained poetic legends as well as prose pseudo-history. Another mysterious volume is the "Latin book" in the monas-tery at Salisbury, to which the romancists of 1160-1220 professed to have resorted for their narratives. In Geof-frey's Historia, compiled, as he says, from William of Wallingford's book, we find three elements blended—(1) the epic of Brutus (which must have been written in Britain before 300); (2) a record of British kings down to the Saxon invasion (probably a corrupt version of the same real history that appears distorted and truncated in Nennius); (3) the lives of Arthur, Guenhuinara, and Merlin (old British popular legends, wrought into union with a later Cymric tradition in which the British or Gadelic Arth-vaur, Art-vor, or Ard-tur had been converted into a Welsh king Arthur).

1 The name Arthur is fouud for the first time in Nennius (where the hero is said not to he a kiug hut only dux beUorum). He explains it as meaning either the "dreadful hear" or the "iron hammer." Now, although the former may refer equally well to Cymric and to Gaelic, i.e., arth-vaur or art-vor, the alternative sense is better sought in Gaelic, ord, a hammer, being a known word in that language, while there is no trace of it iu Cymric. The second syllable of ord-dur is common to both languages, equivalent to the Latin durus, and has assumed in Welsh the meaning of " steel." It probably also meant " iron." This observation shows that Nennius did not know whether the name was a Gaelic or a Cymric one, and the mere uncertainty is in itself an argument that Arthur was distinctly not Cambrian. If it were permissible to seek a purely Gaelic etymology for Arthur we should find it in ard-tur = altus dux, high chief or generalissimo. In the two early authorities Gildas and Bede the British champion of the 5th century is named Ambrosius Aurelius, a man of Roman family.
The Round Table romances had their starting-point in Origin of Geoffrey's Historia, first published in 1138-39, revised and T^blcf republished in its present form in 1147. Yet there is no romances mention in Geoffrey of Lancelot and Tristan, two heroes of much greater importance in the romances than Arthur himself. It does not seem to have been observed before that there is a curious set of resemblances between the personages of the romances and those of the Homeric siege of Troy. The names of Arthur and Uter suggest Atrides (Menelaus and Agamemnon rolled into one); Mark, again, is Menelaus; Guenhuinara and Yseult are like Helen, Guenhuinara also resembling Chryseis and Briseis ; Lancelot and Tristan are like Achilles and Paris. Lancelot becomes for a time the enemy of his king (Arthur = Atrides) and stands aloof from him ; he is un-successful in his quest of the Grail, as Achilles dies before Troy is taken; his son Galaad, like the Achilleid Neo-ptolemus, achieves the father's unfinished task. Lancelot (lanc-e-loc = child of the lake) is brought up in conceal-ment by the Lady of the Lake, just as Thetis (the goddess of the sea) brings up her son Achilles, disguised as a girl, in obscurity. Chiron, to whose care the young Achilles is at first entrusted by Thetis, resembles Merlin, the friend or lover of the Lady of the Lake, in his half divine, half human nature.8 Again, not only does Galaad by his name remind us of the hero of the Achilleidos (it must have been as usual to give this genitive name to the poem of Statius as that of Eneydos to Virgil's), but there are other curious similitudes. The name of King Perles or Pelles, by whose daughter Lancelot becomes the father of Galaad, is suggestive of, or may have been suggested by, the Graeco-Latin appellation of Achilles, Pelides son of Peleus. One of the meanings that has been suggested for the name of Lancelot is Fancelot — the serving man, in refer-ence to one of the incidents of his story. Although a dif-ferent origin is hinted at above, it would not be inappro-priate to designate Achilles in his female disguise at Delos I'ancillet ( = the male damsel, in attendance on Deidamia). As in the old Greek poems we have Atrides and Pelides contesting for Briseis, and the minor Atrides, Menelaus, similarly contending with Paris the ravisher of Helen, so in the romances we find Guenhumara the object of mutual strife between her lover Lancelot and her husband Arthur, son of Uter Pendragon, and Yseult the cause of war between King Mark and Tristan. Again, a resemblance is to be found in the incidents of fabulous birth between Arthur and Hercules, Arthur and Alexander the Great.

These observations are not intended to contradict the claims of the Cymric people to have furnished the romances with much of their material; for it would be difficult to resist the evidence of such names as Tristan and Yseult, which indicate sufficiently their British or Breton origin, and even Lancelot might have been, as first suggested above, a Welsh or British translation of an epithet which would apply to Achilles in connexion with the following words from Statius. Thetis says (as the Lady of the Lake might have said of Lancelot)—_

" Ssepe ipsa (nefas !) sub inania natum Tartara et ad Stygios iterum fero mergere fontes ;"

3 The names of several beings of this mixed nature in the early romances begin with the same word, mer, merhl, or mel, as Merlin, Melusine, Melior, Melion.

original British sense (although in Cymric it means " the true " or " the

while her son's guardian, Chiron, is named in the same place " Carpathius vates," which at once reminds us of the "Caledonius vates" (Merlin) of Geoffrey of Monmouth. At the same time the name of Guenhumara (Guinevere) makes one think of Thetis, the white-footed lady of the sea. As the name Guenhumara certainly preceded in date all the Anglo-French romances and is undoubtedly an old one, we may as well say at once that the intention is here to suggest an hypothesis that Britain produced Latin poets during the time of the Roman occupation, who wrote works not only on the fable of a British descent from tfie Trojans through Brutus, a fabled kinsman of iEneas, but also on the various subjects of classic mythology, the stories of Thebes, Troy, the Golden Fleece, and Alexander. This hypothesis, which requires to be associated with the corollary that British translations or adaptations were formed when the Roman influence began to wane, would account for the curious circumstance that some of the Greek and Oriental fictions are found in Anglo-Saxon versions of much greater antiquity than any that have survived in the other vernaculars of Europe. Direct transference of such works from classical codices can hardly be presumed to have been the custom of a rough and semi-barbarous nation of Teutonic invaders ; the medium must have been the existence of Brito-Latin and British poems among the conquered people.

The success of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia and of his Merlin brought indignant comment from some of the Anglo-Norman historians, but it inflamed the minds of other writers already excited by the extraordinary events of the period. The result was the genesis of modern fiction. Within a few years after Geoffrey's publication the Norman Wace translated the Historia Britonum into French verse (1155), making some additions; and in his work entitled Roman de Brut we find the words— " King Ertur made the Round Table Of which Bretons tell many a fable "—

from which we may infer that the Bound Table stories, which led to the construction of the French romances, were derived directly from Brittany, just as Geoffrey de-clares his Historia to have been. Wace, as a Jersey man, could have made no confusion between the Waleis of Cambria and the Bretun of Armorica.

faithful") to "Alcmena," and may have meant "manly," "robust." Arthur proves his fitness for kingship by the performance of wonder-ful feats like the labours of Hercules.
Recapitulating what has been already said, we may chronologically tabulate the first elements of Arthurian story thus—I. Arthur, Guinevere, Merlin (in Geoffrey), 1136-49 ; II. the Round Table (as shown by Wace), before 1155; III. Lancelot; TV. the Grail; and V. Tristan. Gast's The original Tristan was earlier than the Lancelot, and Tristan Was presumably a French poem (or prose work 1), written , about 1160 by Luc de Gast, a trouvère of English birth Lancelot. wh° lived near Salisbury, and is said to have had access to the book of stories referred <;o in a previous paragraph. The poem (?) and the book have perished, and the Tristan story was written under the name of Le Bret ( = the Breton), to distinguish it from Le Brut ( = the Briton) of Wace, at a later date, with so much additional matter that it must be placed after the Lancelot. Walter MAP (q.v.) of Here-ford, who died archdeacon of Oxford in the year 1210, was a man of Welsh origin or kindred. In 1185 Hue de Bote-lande of Credenhill near Hereford wrote a French romantic poem, in which the names of the characters are all derived from the Thebais of Statius, but the incidents are wholly imaginative or derived from other sources. In it he speaks, in deprecation of any blame for his falsification of the truth of history, of Walter Map as being quite as great a romancer as himself. In connexion with statements fre-quently repeated in the early MSS. of the romances, this remark suffices to prove that before 1185 Walter Map had already published his Lancelot. We may fairly put the date before 1175, say about 1170 ; and it would be prob-ably correct to assume that the Lancelot was a French poem (or prose work 1) composed while the author was still young (1165-70). It has perished, like Luc de Gast's Tristan, and we can only conjecture that it had some similar connexion with the Achilles of Statius to that of Hue de Botelande's poem with the Thebais. It was, how-ever, reduced to or rewritten in prose and amplified before 1200 in the form in which we now find it in several old MSS. (none earlier than the 13th century). It is certain that Bustighello or Busticien of Pisa was employed about 1270-75 to unify or narmonize in a single compilation tha scattered Arthurian romances, and it is considered probable that the result was the French prose original of the exist-ing Morte Arthur. But it is also certain that there exist prose Arthurian romances in MSS. at least as old as 1270, and that they were copies of yet older ones. Busticien's work must have been simply one of compression and com-bination. We know from the MSS. of two different prose translations of a totally different romantic chronicle (the Pseudo-Turpin's Chronicle of Charlemagne), written in and about 1200, that metrical narrative was losing credit and that French prose composition had already set in. This statement, which refers to the French kingdom, is likely to be yet more applicable to England, where metrical suc-cess would naturally be more difficult to achieve than in the true home of French speech. As prose was current in France before 1200, it is not rash to assume that it had an earlier and less limited currency in England. Beckon-ing thus we may assume that the Lancelot and the Tristan were written in prose before 1190.

The Round Table and the Grail are so closely connected Early that it is difficult to regard them as having had each a Bouui. separate origin. The mention of the former by Wace proves the existence of stories of a Bound Table current Grail before 1155. The Bound Table as it appears in the current stories, texts of the romances is simply an important portion of the furniture of the narratives : it does not represent a cycle of incidents or even a number of special episodes. One might suppose from the form of Wace's phrase that the word was with him, as it is now, a general epithet to designate Arthurian stories, rather than merely the nam( of a material object, as it is in the romances. But we cannot assume the fact for lack of specific information. The first and also the chief instance which we have of the appearance of the Round Table (beyond Wace's allusion) is in the existing Lancelot, which we may refer to about 1190. In the epilogue of the Tristan, Hélie de Borron speaks of Luc de Gast's original work on that hero as the first of "les grans livres de la tauble roonde." There is no reason to imagine that this phrase was written after the year 1200; and it indicates sufficiently that several books were collectively styled " Romances of the Round Table " between 1155 and the end of the century. One of these books was Joseph of Arimathea, or the History of the Holy Graal, written about 1170-80 by Robert de Borron or Robert of Bouron, a trouvère born near Meaux. This narrative seems to have taken at least two forms before it was incorporated in the prose Lancelot, and the alterations were so numerous and important that some writers con-sider the Grand Graal to have been a rewriting effected in collaboration by .Walter Map and Bobert de Borron. The earlier portion of the History of the Graal was but lightly treated on its incorporation in the Lancelot, and the form in which we have it in the separate romance of the Graal is of more modern compilation. The later portion of the Grail story—namely, the Queste du Graal, which was utilized by Map (or his recompiler) in the Lancelot—differs from that of the French writer in making Galaad the achiever, while Perceval was the hero of the quest in Robert de Borron's work and its recompilations, as well as in the separate prose romance of Perceval and the separate Histoire du Graal. We may conclude that the older works (the original Lancelot, Merlin, and Tristan) had nothing of the Grail in them, and that the publication in French of the Tristan by Luc de Gast and the Lancelot by Walter Map (produced in this succession between 1160 and 1180) were accidentally contemporaneous with Bobert de Borron's poem (or prose work) on the grail ( = chalice) or cup of Christ's passion and the table of the Last Supper, based upon an old legend (connected in some way with the ancient popular Gospel of Nicodeinus), according to which Joseph of Arimathea brought Christianity to Britain in the time of Vespasian. Then Bobert de Borron continued his story in another work which represented the quest or rediscovery of the Grail in Avalon, Brittany, or Britain, by Perceval, the grand-nephew of Joseph of Arimathea ; and Walter Map appropriated so much of De Borron's Histoire and Queste as suited him, working it up in a continuation -of his story on Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot, whilst adding to and altering the incidents of the narrative very considerably. Finally, Hélie de Borron (about 1190) rewrote the Tristan in something like its existent form, weaving it by enlargement into connexion with the other tales, and probably soon after 1200 united for the first time in one enormous and unharmonized corpus the full set of Arthurian stories. One reason why we cannot assign this first combination to a later date (as those do who hold the work of Busticien of Pisa to have been something more than a mere compression) is that the Guiron, written by Hélie de Borron (probably soon after 1200), is not in-corporated in the Morte Arthur, which it would assuredly have been if Busticien (about 1270-75) had been employed to unite a number of detached stories rather than to re-edit an already existing compilation. Of Hélie de Borron we only know that he was a relative of Bobert ; that he was the virtual author of the Bret or Tristan, in which he incorporated the substance of tales written by Luc de Gast _and Gasse li Blont ; that he also wrote Palamedes in two parts (Meliadus and Guiron le Courtois) ; and that his work was done at the request of a king of England, alleged to have been Henry II. or Henry III. Of the other early writers of Arthurian stories the chief were the trouvère Chrestien do Troyes (about 1180-90), who com-posed a poem upon an episode of Map's Lancelot story, and another upon the Perceval (in which he may have combined Bobert de Borron and Map), and Guyot de Provins (about 1190-95), who wrote a romance of Perceval, now lost, and only known through the German translation of "Wolfram von Eschenbach (about 1205). As for the Welsh stories in the Mabinogion and the Welsh Seint Greal, there is really no evidence to show their anteriority to the English Morte Arthur, except the fact that two of the tales (Geraint and the Lady of the Fountain) are of similar substance to the poems of Chrestien de Troyes, Free et Fnide and Le Chevalier au Lyon,—narratives of Arthurian personages but not embodied in the French prose romances. Even the Welsh chronicles which are supposed to have furnished the original text of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia have been ascertained to be merely translations from the Latin version. It is a safe con-clusion to say that anything in Welsh literature corre-sponding with portions or incidents of the French romances was simply a translation made in the 13th or 14th century from a French original. This refers, of course, to what is now extant, for there can be little question that Breton and Cymric legend furnished the earlier romancists with names and legends in plenty. Returning to the consideration of names, it is obvious that when Lawnselot dy Lak appears in Welsh it is simply a corruption of the Franco-English Lancelot, and that the Cymric writer had no idea of its above-suggested origin in a British lanc-edoc (a conjecture which is fortified by the pleonasm of dudak or deldak) or in a French Vancillet. Consequently the original Lancelot story has left no trace in purely Welsh literature. With Perceval we may think differently ; the Welsh name Pere-dur, under which he is known, is a sufficient warrant for supposing that portions of the Welsh tale are at least as ancient as Walter Map. The very form Pered-ur, like that of Arth-ur, is archaic, and with the latter it requires a different interpretation from that which Welsh scholars have given it. Here it may be observed that the terminal ur, whatever may have been its true sense, is remarkable for its frequent use in the names of Pictish princes. As for Perceval, wherever Bobert de Borron got the name (see below), Walter Map, in adopting it for the hero of the story that belongs to Peredur, made the two names thenceforward identical.

Analysis of the Arthurian Romances. I. II. Arthur and the Round Table had no separate romance, or else it has perished. It exists now substantially as part of Lancelot (III.).

I. Merlin.—Most of his story appears in Geoffrey of Monmouth Merlin and in "Wace, from whom it was probably worked up into a French poem (or prose work) by Robert de Borron about 1160-70. Thè French prose composition, embracing his life and, as an appendix, his prophecies (Latin by Geoffrey), was apparently written about 1200 (by Hélie de Borron) in the form in which it exists in certain MSS., and nearly as it appears in printed books. Merlin, the son of an incubus, rescued at his birth by sudden baptism from the malignant destiny for which his diabolical parent had begotten him, is always described as a magician. He is called by the Welsh Myrddin, a form which betrays the posteriority of the existing Cambrian legends not only to the date of Geoffrey but also to the French romances ; in one of the earliest incidents of his story, however, he himself gives his name as Ambrosius. He is repre-sented as living apparently at the time of the Saxon invasion of England. He was not a friend of Vortigern ; this king, whom we know from English sources to have been attached more to the Saxons than to his countrymen, was represented in the old Merlin story as a usurper reigning in an interval between Moines, son of Constans, and the two brothers of Moines, Uter and Pendragon. After the successive deaths of Vortigern and Pendragon (on whose fall Uter adds his brother's name to his own) Merlin continues to be the friend and counsellor of King Uter Pendragon. In that capacity he helps the king to assume the shape of Gorlais, duke of Tintagel, and thereby to beget Arthur upon the Duchess Yguerne. (The name Pendragon and the action remind us of the fabulous birth of Alexander the Great ; the name Uter, in connexion with the go-between Merlin, and the probable Celtic meaning of Yguerne remind us of Jupiter, Mercury, and Alcmena.) The result is the birth of a hero who resembles both Hercules and Alexander. He grows up and is held to be merely the son of Gorlais, in spite of the fact that he was born after Yguerne (already a widow) had married Uter Pendragon ; but he proves his right to royal place after the king's death by performing some extraordinary feats. In these he has Merlin's aid, as well as in the conduct of his sub-sequent wars with the Gauls and the Saxons. Merlin has a lover or mistress in Viviane, the Lady of the Lake, to whom in an unlucky moment (as Samson to Delilah) he betrays a certain spell. She uses it to try her power, without having learned the converse charm, and poor Merlin vanishes into the midst of a thornbush, whence his voice can be heard ; but he is seen no more. Here the romance ends,—one of the most interesting, as well as one of the best-constructed and most simply told of the Arthurian series. The name and deeds of the enchanter have found their way into most modern literatures. One of Merlin's actions was to institute a round table at Carduel, at which room was made for King Arthur and fifty of his nobles, with a vacant place for the Holy Grail. This was a ceremony to be performed once every year, and it was on the first of these occasions that Gorlais brought his wife Yguerne with him to court, and that King Arthur fell in love with her (as David with Bathsheba). This circumstance, although of later date than the original Merlin, leads us to the next romance in the cycle.

IV. 1. The Holy Grail.—The Grail romance began with Borron's Holy poem (or prose narrative) on Joseph of Arimathea. An old tradi- Grail, tion maintained that Joseph of Arimathea (confounded in some respects with the centurion at the crucifixion and with Josephus the historian) brought the gospel to Britain or to Gaul in the first century of our era. The French romance on this subject, whichever of its existent early forms in verso and prose was the earlier, relates the story thus :—Pilate allowed Joseph to take down the body of Christ from the cross, and gave Him also son vaisseul, by which was evidently meant the chalice of His passion, or the cup used at the Last Supper. Of all the numerous interpretations suggested for the word "grail" or "graal" the only tenable one is that of "cup," which plainly refers to the words "son vaisseul." In that cup Joseph collected the precious blood of his Saviour. He loses it when put in prison by the Jews, but it is restored to him in his cell by Christ Himself. Vespasian, son of the emperor Titus, falls ill, hears of Christ, frees Joseph from his prison, becomes a Christian, and reduces the Jews to slavery. Joseph takes leave of Vespasian, goes forth with those who had joined him and his brother-in-law Bron. After a while the adherents suffer privation for having sinned secretly, and Joseph is directed by the voice of Jesus speaking from fire vaisseul (graal) to establish a test of righteousness and sin by means of the holy blood, calling to remembrance His own words about Judas, that " he who shall betray Me is eating and drinking with Me." The place of the rejected Judas should be filled, not at the table of the Last Supper, but at another table which Joseph should make in token of it,—a square one, and not until Bron's grandson (the third man of Joseph's lineage) should be fit to take it. The table was constructed, a repast prepared, one place left empty, and the Graal put upon the board, with some fish which had been caught by Bron for the occa-sion. Those who could find a place at the board felt a sense of satisfaction and were known to be righteous ; those who could find no place were recognized as the sinners whose secret licentiousness had caused the distress among them. Then the name of graal was given to the vaisseul, because of its gracious and delightful influence. A hypocrite named Moyse who attempts to sit at the table without avowing his sins is swallowed up in the earth. Alan, the son of Bron, grows up to be head of the line, and is en-trusted with the knowledge of all things that Joseph could teach and a sight of the Grail. He leads his kinsmen to the far "West, to the vale of Avaron or Avalon, whither the disciple Petrus or Perron precedes them with a letter given him by Joseph, after he has seen the latter transfer to Bron the custody of the vaisseul. The son of Alan is in due time to grow to manhood, to read Peter's letter, and again to see the Grail—a boon which is as it were to renew the covenant of the Saviour with the family and followers of Joseph of Arimathea—to expose and expel the false, and to bring celestial happiness upon all the true. The race is now settled in Britain, and Perceval, the son of Alan, is the third man who is to see the Grail, after having passed through a perilous quest. Up to this point the mystic and pious romance of the Grail was derived by Kobert de Borron from sources other than those which furnished the Arthurian stories ; but the new realm of fiction was open (it was about 1160-70), and the Franco-British tales coming to his knowledge must have supplied him with the incidents of his third man's quest and even the very name of Perceval. It is diffi-cult to assign the exact proportion of give and take among the early romances; but at this point there is a new departure in which several writers took various parts. Perceval. IV. 2. Perceval.—The original story of the knight Perceval, before he takes up the quest, is simply that of an inexperienced youth who knows nothing of arms and chivalry, but whose rustic retirement with his mother has not deteriorated the instincts of his noble birth. After some amusing incidents, in which his youthful awkwardness is playfully depicted, he exhibits so much courage and skill as to become a doughty champion, the vanquisher of bullies and the protector of ladies ; and, when he reaches the court of King Arthur, knighthood is offered him. Chrestien de Troyes related the tale in verse (before 1191), but he probably had it from the (prose or poetic) narrative woven (about 1170-75) by Walter Map into his work which we call La?icclot. The agreement, so far, of those writers and the text of the Mabinogi of Peredur on the same subject leads to a supposition that the latter represents a Cambrian story older than Walter Map ; but the introduction of the cup and the lance into it invalidates the theory that its existent Welsh form is the original. Robert de Borron continued his Graal, by relating the quest of the holy vessel—still in the hands of Bron, le Roi Pecheour, but hidden from all save the predestined per-fect knight—pursued by Bron's grandson Perceval, the only man who, by his origin, had a right to search for and find it so as to fill the vacant place at the table. Robert de Borron must have written his story more than once, and the result was that he also introduced his hero to Arthur's court, where Merlin had founded a round table. This round table, probably an independent element in the Breton legends, must have caught Robert de Borron's fancy as lending a further symbol of trinity (being the third table) to his own conception of the third descendant of Joseph of Arimathea. In his relation of the quest Perceval (whom he in no way identifies with the rustic Perceval or Peredur mentioned above) starts from Arthur's court, and after various adventures sees his grandfather, the Grail, the lance, and the broken sword without knowing with whom he is or making inquiry. In a second attempt he is more successful. Bron reveals himself, explains all the signs (the lance is that which pierced the Saviour's side), and communicates the precious truths which Joseph of Arimathea had ordered to be told only to the third of his lineage. Then the fisher-king dies ; all the enchantments of Britain pass away (we presume the reign of idolatry is meant); and Perceval is left as the custodian of the Grail. This version of the Perceval and the preceding Saint Graal, both by Robert de Borron, have only been printed of late years (the former as a supplement to the latter) from rare and little known MSS., and differ enormously from the old printed Grail and Perceval, and most of the MSS. which contain them. The introduction, however slightly, of Arthur, Merlin, and Gawain into Robert de Borron's Perceval simply shows that he had made acquaintance with Walter Map's Lancelot; yet the large use made by Map of the Frenchman's Grail and Perceval implies that they wrote contem-poraneously, but that De Borron's second part preceded Map's second part. In the latter the young rustic is represented as the youngest son of King Pellinore, brought by an elder brother out of his retirement and presented for an inferior class of knighthood at Arthur's court. He then meets all the other companions of the Round Table, to whom, as well as to Arthur and Guinevere, he makes himself very dear. He becomes one of the knights who undertake the quest of the Grail, a task which is proposed for accomplishment by him who is the best knight in the world. According to the Lancelot fiction he fails because of having sligh

PEDIGREE OF THE ROUND-TABLE HEROES.

== TABLE ==

infringed a vow, and the labour is achieved by one even purer than himself among the Round Table heroes, namely, Galaad, the son of Lancelot. All this is of Map's own invention, and much of it must have been posterior to Chrestien's poem, in which (although based partly on Map and partly on Robert de Borron) Perceval remained the achiever of the quest. The Borronesque view of Perceval as one of a line of successive Grail-custodians or Grail-kings impressed the imagination of Guyot de Provins, and led him to regard with contempt the pleasant episodes of Perceval's youth as told by Chrestien. In Wolfram von Eschenbach's poem there is a long succession of Grail-kings, beginning with Titurel, and ending with Partzifal (Perceval) ; the scene of their rule is shifted to Anjou and Spain ; the story is said to draw its origin from a book found at Toledo ; several Moorish and Catalan names are found in it; and finally the Grail-kings and their people are confounded with the Templars, struggling against the heathens. The romance of Perceval le Gallois, such as we have it since its first appearance in print in 1530, is a prose compilation derived from the poem begun by Chrestien de Troyes about 1180 and finished by Manessier about 1230.
Lancelot. III. Lancelot.—-This hero, like Perceval, has furnished an addi-tion to European nomenclature. In this romance, which there is so much evidence for ascribing to the celebrated Walter Map (see above), the substance of Geoffrey's Arthur, Guinevere, and Merlin was used as the introduction to a powerful fiction in which a new hero, Lancelot of the Lake, carries on an adulterous amour with Queen Guinevere, while at the same time he reveres and loves King Arthur and performs deeds of heroic daring under the influence of the most generous feelings. The tale, although lengthy and overladen with a crowd of adventures which have no bearing on the direct development of the plot, and notwithstanding the unpleasant nature of the chief subject, is one of extraordinary interest. The character of Lancelot remains unaltered throughout the course of the story, and is drawn with a masterly hand. Although his love is criminal, and he frequently does pious penance for his sins, yet his utter self-sacrificing devotion to the queen weakens by its exquisite fidelity the reader's sense of his treachery towards the king, whom he never ceases to regard with a feeling of the deepest affection and reverence. His faults are such that he recognizes his own incompetence to become the achiever of the quest; but he begets, upon Elaine, the daughter of King Pelles, a son Galaad, to whom the glory of winning the Grail and redeeming his father's sins is reserved. Even here the romancer takes care to show that he was not untrue to Guinevere, his senses having been deceived by a spell (used by Elaine's maid to gratify her mistress's longing), which makes him imagine that his bedfellow is the queen. Nemesis begins to work when, upon a second use of the spell, Guinevere, after having waited for him in vain, finds him in the arms of King Pelles's daughter. She reproaches him bitterly and drives him from her presence with such cruel words that he becomes insane and wanders about tlie woods and fields like Nebuchadnezzar. Some years elapse before he is recognized by Elaine, when chance takes him to the castle of Corbin, in which King Pelles has custody of the Grail. She cures him by means of the sacred vessel; but it is not long before he quits her again and finds his way to Camelot. Arthur and the queen and his fellow-knights are rejoiced to see the lost Lancelot again, and the usual round of tournaments begins. We now come to the episode of Galaad. On the eve of Pentecost an old man dressed in white brings a youth to Arthur's court. When all the knights are assembled at the ensuing banquet every seat is filled save that which was always left vacant for the Holy Grail, so that there is no place for young Galaad. Certain wondrous signs are pointed out by the old man which indicate that the " seat perilous " is meant to be filled by the young hero, who at once accomplishes another test which has foiled Gavvain and Perceval. The Grail appears, and light and perfume fill the hall; it passes away again, and the next day the knights depart upon the quest of the holy vessel, Arthur giving way to a pathetic regret that his merry company of Round Table champions is to be broken up for ever. Galaad, the pure knight, is the only one who succeeds, and becomes king of the Hoiy City ; then Joseph of Arimathea appears, and Galaad dies, his task accomplished. Gawain and Bors fail; Lancelot and Perceval nearly succeed, but are foiled. Bors brings back an account of Perceval's death, and Lancelot returns to court, a moody man ; he and Guinevere fall back into the old sin. The queen is accused of having poisoned a knight, and is exposed to the usual ordeal. Lancelot saves her by conquering her accuser, but receives wounds which break open at the next secret meeting between them. Scandal has been busy ; spies are on the watch ; and, although, when the lovers are surprised, he escapes by dint of hard fighting, the stains of blood found in the queen's bed are sufficient to condemn them. She is doomed to the stake, but at the moment of execution Lancelot appears and rescues her. They fly together to his castle of Joyeuse Garde, in which he is soon besieged by King Arthur, the king's nephew Gawain, and the other faithful knights. He offers to give up the queen if no harm shall be done her ; Arthur rejects the offer ; and, after long fighting, news comes of a papal interdict promulgated against the kingdom so long as King Arthur refuses to take back his wife. Guinevere is then received by her husband, but Arthur is advised by Gawain to continue the war against Lancelot, whom he follows to his castle of Gannes in France. During the siege Arthur has tidings of an insurrection in Britain : his nephew Mordred has seized the throne, and the queen has fortified herself in London against the usurper. He returns, and after a series of desperate battles Mordred is killed and Arthur wounded to death. Flinging his sword away, the king disappears from mortal view and is borne by fairies to Avalon. Lancelot also returns to England, laments the king's death, pays a mournful visit to the queen, now in a nunnery, retires himself to a monastery, and dies soon afterwards in sorrow and repentance. The original Lancelot was the true Arthur or Round Table romance, although when first written it probably contained no mention of Perceval and Galaad. To it all the other tales and episodes gravitated, and the above analysis represents probably its final form about the year 1200. When at a later period, in the 13th century, it was abridged, and the Bret (Tristan) also, and both of them amal-gamated in the general Arthurian work now extant in many MSS. of the 14th and 15th centuries, the compilation came into existence which was translated into English by Sir Thomas Malory under the title Morte Arthur. The original complete Lancelot maybe considered as a corporate work including the five branches which had previ-ously been separate, namely, (1) Merlin ; (2) Arthur and the Round Table ; (3) Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot; (4) Joseph of Arima-thea and the Grail; the Quest of the Grail and Perceval modified into (5) the new Quest of the Grail and Galaad. A sixth element was added in the French compilation, which formed the original of the Morte Arthur of Sir Thomas Malory, namely, (6) the story of Tristan and Yseult.

V. Tristan.—This beautiful Breton or Cornish romance was originally a work totally independent of the Arthurian, Round Table, and Grail fictions ; and, if it is said by Helie de Borron to have been left incomplete by its first author, the Anglo-Norman knight Luc or Luces, of the castle of Gast, Gait, or Gau, near Salis-bury, and by Gasse li Blont (Eustace Blunt), who is spoken of as a continiiator, we may presume that his statement was based upon no deficiency in the original narrative, but simply on the absence of all allusion to the Round Table. He therefore set to work to produce what he called the Bret, or the complete Tristan, by constructing a number of episodes which exhibit Tristan as one of the Round Table knights, as also having engaged in the quest, and as having been with his lady-love entertained for some time at Lancelot's castle of Joyeuse Garde. The Saracen knight Palamedes, who takes an important place in the complete Tristan, and who is not one of the least interesting characters, seems to have been one of the additions. Whether the first author was really a knight or not, and whether he wrote in poetry or prose, it may here be said once for all that the earliest exoteric reference to the authors of the Round Table romances is that of Helinand, who, writing close to the date of Walter Map's death (c. 1210), mentioned them as " quosdam proceres," a phrase which could only be used as indi-cating personages ranking at least as high as knights. Tristan (in the old English form, Tristram) of Lyonesse is the nephew of King Mark of Cornwall. Warned by a dwarf that his nephew's existence will be pernicious to him, the king resolves to compass his death. His attempt is frustrated : the child is carried to the court of the Frank king Faramond, and there grows up towards man's estate. He wins the love of Faramond's daughter, on the discovery of which he is compelled to fly to his uncle at Tintagel, with whom a reconciliation is effected. A prince called Morhoult or the Morhoult of Ireland lands in Cornwall to claim tribute of King Mark. Tristan challenges him to single combat, wounds him mortally, and compels him to reimbark in a dying condition, but is himself wounded by the poisoned lance of his adversary. Seek-ing afterwards a healer for his wounds, he is borne by the wind to Ireland, and well received by the king of Ireland and his daughter Yseult, who restore him to health. It is, however, observed that he is wearing the sword of Morhoult, and he is obliged to take a hasty departure. On his return to Cornwall the incidents of the complete Tristan begin to connect him with Arthur and the Round Table, but his victory over a knight, there said to have accused the Irish king of treason before King Arthur, is probably part of the original tale. He goes with the absolved monarch to Ireland at his request, and is prayed to accompany Yseult to Cornwall, whither her father sends her as King Mark's bride. Yseult's mother delivers a philtre or love-potion to Brangian (or Bronwen), her daughter's nurse, which the latter is commissioned to give Yseult to drink on the wedding-day, in order that she may conceive a true wifely affection for her stranger husband. Brangian, however, gives it to Tristan and Yseult, who drink, unconscious of the spell that is about to influence their lives. They love each other at once and for ever. During the voyage they land on an island, where Tristan, by overcoming an enchantment, proves that he and his companion are the best knight and fairest lady in all the world. They reach Cornwall at last, aud think with dread on the approach of the fatal night which is to separate them and to make King Mark aware of his bride's fault. A device, which appeared to the old romancers one of easy performance, is suggested by Brangian, who, to save her mistress's honour, takes her place on the marriage night, trusting that King Mark's carousals and the darkness will cover the fraud. The scheme is carried out satisfactorily ; but the fair Yseult hires two ruffians to slay Brangian, lest the fact should ever come to light. The intending murderers, however, are smitten with pity, and simply leave their victim bound to a tree, from which position she is soon afterwards rescued. As her rescuer was Palamedes, the Saracen knight, who must be looked upon as one of the inventions of Helie de Borron, we may venture to hope that Yseult's unwomanly cruelty formed no part of the original story. Palamedes is a magnanimous and interesting char-acter, who loves Yseult with a purer love than Tristan, and who spends his life in a generous antagonism to his rival. The man wdio invented Palamedes and Guiron must have been himself a knight of the noblest type. The intrigue of the two lovers is carried on for some time, till Mark's suspicions are aroused and Tristan leaves Cornwall. Again he receives by treachei-y a poisoned wound ; but, as he cannot return to Mark's court to obtain healing at the hands of the fair Yseult, he decides upon going to Brittany, to seek a remedy there from her cousin, the white-handed Yseult, who is equally expert in treating wounds. She cures him and falls in love with him ; he marries her from gratitude. The descrip-tion of the wedding night proves that he still loves the other Yseult, for he remains faithful to her in the most material point, the white-handed lady being so innocent that she is unaware of the slight cast upon her charms. He makes his wife's brother Peredur or Pheredur his confidant, and the two quit Brittany to-gether and reach Cornwall. A fresh source of misery opens for him now, as Pheredur falls in love with fair Yseult. Tristan becomes insane and wanders away ; but after some time he is brought back to the court, where Yseult restores him to reason, at the cost, how-ever, of reawakening the jealous wrath of King Mark, who compels him to quit Cornwall, making him swear never to return. Helie's Tristan now joins the Round Table company at King Arthur's court, and King Mark, still unsatisfied, goes thither also with the purpose of bringing about his nephew's death. The unfavourable view of Mark's character is here heightened by making him speak and act in the most ridiculous manner. Arthur reconciles the uncle and the nephew ; Tristan goes back with Mark, and frees Cornwall from an invasion by the Saxons ; but he fails to win favour from the king, who puts him in a dungeon. He is released by an insurrec-tion and King Mark himself is imprisoned; Tristan flies with Yseult and is received in Joyeuse Garde by Lancelot, until King Arthur brings about a fresh reconciliation, and Yseult is restored to Mark along with his kingdom. Tristan now returns to his neglected wife, but finds that a revolt has fortunately saved him from the necessity of repaying her devotion with caresses. He goes forth to fight, and subdues the rebel count, but is sorely wounded again. The white-handed lady tends him, cures him, and becomes his wife in deed as well as in name. He quits her once more, and renews his secret intercourse with fair Yseult in Cornwall, until discovery compels him to return to Brittany. In giving his aid to the unsuccessful prosecution of an amour by his brother-in-law he is once more poisonously wounded. Ho comes to such a dangerous pass that at last he sends a secret messenger to fair Yseult, to bring her back with him if possible. Should she be able and willing to come the ship is to be rigged with white sails ; with black, on the con-trary, if the mission is unsuccessful. Tristan's anxiety comes to the knowledge of white-handed Yseult, who, seized with sudden jealousy, when the white-sailed vessel comes gaily dancing over the waves, goes to her sick husband and tells him that the sails are black. He bids her at once farewell and dies of a broken heart. Fair Yseult, on reaching land, hears of his death, makes her way to the chamber where his corpse is lying, and dies upon her dead hero's breast. Their bodies are conveyed to Cornwall, along with Tristan's sword, formerly Morhoult's, and Mark learns the story of the love-potion. Seized with pity, he has the two lovers buried not far from each other, and a wondrous tree extends its branches to overshadow their two graves.





Palamedes; Meliadus and Guiron. — This, the last romance written by any of the original writers of the Round Table stories, Meliadus was composed by Helie de Borron about 1220 at the desire ofand Henry III. of England (who paid him noble guerdon for his labour). Guiron. He had already made Palamedes (the Saracen knight finally baptized and adopted to the Round Table) so prominent and so noble a char-acter in his Bret, or romance of Tristan, that the king wished for another book on the subject. Since the story was to be one of knightly courtesy, its name should be Palamedes. As that hero takes only a minor part in the transactions of the story it is diffi-cult to believe that he meant the name as other than a metaphor. The book is divided into two distinct tales,—one relating the adven-tures of Meliadus, who begat Tristan upon the adulterous queen of Scotland, and the other those of a knight whose name appears here for the first time,—Guiron le Courtois. Meliadus is a dull and clumsy composition, chiefly remarkable for the circumstance that it alludes to the Charlemagne romances, and includes among its per-sonages Aryhoan of Saxony, ancestor of Ogyers le Danois (Ogier the Dane). Even the account which it gives of Tristan's birth is wholly at variance with that which the writer had already given (or accepted) in the romance of Tristan and Yseult. As for Guiron, the beauty of his character redeems the tediousness of the narrative. From the point of view of human noble-mindedness it is the best of all the Arthurian tales, Guiron being equally free from the criminal sensuality of Lancelot and Tristan on the one hand, and distant from the superangelieal purity of Galaad and Perceval on the other. Under the most trying circumstances he keeps himself chastely aloof from sin, although love is mutual between himself and his friend's wife ; and, when on one occasion he reflects how near he has been to the verge of criminality, he strikes his own sword into his breast as a punishment. It is needless to say that he does not die but lives to see that same friend, Denain le Roux, carry off a maiden on whom he (Guiron) has bestowed a more justifiable affec-tion. "When, after a year's vain search, he meets his false friend and his ravished lady-love together, he fights and conquers Denain but spares his life, and goes away with the lady, still in love with her. Denain exhibits his friendship and gratitude effectually after-wards, but the story is left unfinished, Guiron and Bloye having been entrapped by treachery and lying still within the walls of a dungeon. The author refers to his Meliadus for an account of their liberation; but this simply shows that he intended to rewrite Mcliadus. Fifty or sixty years later Rusticien of Pisa abridged the Palamedes, and inserted the incidents of the two in his compila-tion of Arthurian romances, now lost as a whole, although usually confounded with the Morte Arthur. From his compilation the printed Meliadus and Guiron were further abridged and finally printed so in separate form.

Ysaie le Triste, Arthus de Bretaigne, and Perceforest are three Ysaie, romances which had also considerable vogue, but, although they Arthus belong to the Arthurian cycle, they have no real connexion beyond de Bret-the use of British names and the supposed kinship of the heroes aigne, with those of the old stories. Almost as much might bo alleged and against the Mcliadus and the Guiron, but they were at least written Perce-by one of the first authors of the genuine works, and he had pre- forest, sumably some acquaintance with the British folk-legends. The fact that Rusticien of Pisa about 1270-75 abridged and compiled in a single great book the scattered and discordant stories of the earlier period, at the request of Prince Edward (afterwards Edward I.) of England, is universally conceded. That compilation has never been printed ; it is even uncertain whether any MS. in existence repre-sents it, for, although the English Morte Arthur is usually supposed to have been compendiously translated from it, we may infer with greater probability that Sir Thomas IMalory used an earlier compila-tion, perhaps the work of Helie de Borron. One reason to justify such a conjecture may be found in the absence of Guiron and Meliadus from the English book, which would hardly be the case if the former notion were correct, since we know that Rusticien published an abridged text of those two works. Rusticien's compilation could in fact only be recovered approximately by re-uniting the texts of the various Arthurian romances as printed in French in the 15th and 16th centuries,—these abridged and inferior texts having apparently been derived or rewritten from his book, not from MSS. of the separate old romances. The Morte Arthur was printed by Caxton from Sir Thomas Malory's MS. translation or adaptation made in England not many years before the printer's establishment at Westminster. As an early English text and as the only existing homogeneous embodiment of the ancient Franco-British romances, it is of the highest interest, while at the same time it breathes the earnest and simple feeling which animates the originals,—differing thus toto ccelo from the colder, more arti-ficial, and less interesting narratives which were invented in the 15th century, and of which the Ysaie, Arthus de Bretaigne, and Perceforest are examples. All three may be referred to the first half of that century, although it has been alleged that the second was written in the 14th. Ysaie forestalls to some extent the type of the 16th and 17th century French romances. It is an early instance of the use of a favourite device in later fiction, by which fairies are introduced who bestow special gifts at the birth of a hero ; and amongst its chief personages is the misshapen dwarf Tronc, after-wards named Aubron—that is, Oberon—and made beautiful. He was adopted from the old French story of Huon de Bordeaux, just as the Oberon of the latter had his origin in the Elberich of the Heldenbuch. The original composition of Pcrceforest has been assigned without reason to the 13th century, and it is possible that some insignificant portion of the romance may have been written in the 14th ; but the probability is that David Aubert was the real author of the extant work, and that he wrote it at the court of Burgundy about 1450. It would be difficult to imagine a work more absurd, heterogeneous, and wearying in its immensity than this. The very "variety" for which Dunlop praises it merely indicates the mass of multifarious and incongruous incidents, un-connected and uninteresting, of which it is full. Antiquaries, how-ever, find it useful for the history of those knightly sports called tournaments, immense numbers of which are described in minute detail. Arthur of Little Britain must have been considered a very interesting romance when Lord Berners translated it into English, but we cannot discover its attractiveness. It is a dull inartistic composition, with scarcely any distinctiveness in the drawing of its personages.

Minor A great number of poetic and prose compositions, beginning Arthur- with chansons and fabliaux in the 12th and 13th centuries, form ian ro- a large portion of the literature of Arthurian romance ; but in most mances. instances they deal only with episodes, and are better described in the articles relating to the literature to which they belong than they could be, or ought to be, here. Some of them may, however, be mentioned briefly in chronological succession. In the 12th century —that is, between 1170 and 1200—Arnaud Daniel the troubadour wrote a poem, now quite lost, on Lancelot and Guinevere ; Chrestien de Troy es the trouvère wrote one entitled the Charrette, i.e., in refer-ence to Lancelot's unknightly mode upon one occasion of hurrying to the rescue of Guinevere in a cart for want of a horse ; this story was continued by Godefroi de Leigni. Chrestien wrote another poem on (Peredur) Perceval, which was continued by three other hands, in which Perceval remains the achiever of the Grail-quest. He also wrote Erec et Enide, a poem which contains the same substance as the Welsh story of Geraint in the Mabinogion, and which never appeared in any of the Arthurian romances ; and the Chevalier au Lyon, which is similarly identical with the Lady of the Fountain in the Mabinogion. Owen or Ywain, the Chevalier au Lyon, is a prominent Bound Table knight in the romances, but his story is not incorporated in them. Hartmann von der Ane translated Chrestien's poem into German verse before 1200 ; in English it appeared as Ywain and Gawain in the 14th century ; another English poem, Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight, was written about 1360, as well as a Scottish Golagrus and Gawaine, in the 14th century. A poem, dated 1212, containing Le Roman de Joseph d'Arimathie, has been published by Francisque Michel, and is supposed by many to be Robert de Borron's original work. Its substance is the same as the first part of the prose Petit Graal, which Hucher has published as Borron's real original. About the same time, or a few years earlier, Ulrich von Zatzikhoven translated Arnaud Daniel's Lancelot into German verse ; the lost Perceval in verse of Guyot de Provins and Wolfram von Eschenbach's metrical German version of it (in which he miscalls the trouvère " Kiot der Provenzal") have already been mentioned. There is an early German poem called Wigalois, composed by Wirnt of Grafenberg (i.e., Gui, son of Gawain), evidently derived soon after 1200 from a French original, Gui Galeis or Giglan, which is lost. On Gawain himself there are two French poems by Raoul and Renault or Raoul de Beaujeu, of the 13th century ; and one of Chrestien de Troyes's chansons (before 1200) celebrates Cliges, a nephew of Gawain. A French poem on Merlin dates from about 1300. There is a Petit Tristan or Brun de la Montagne, written in verse in the 14th century. The French poems of Marie de France, written in England early in the 13th century, contain lays of Lanval and of Chèvre-feuille (on Tristan), which are professedly Arthurian subjects. Of the English works on the Round Table romances the chief are the metrical History of the Grail, trans-lated early in the 15th century by Henry Lonelich, and published from a MS. by the Roxburghe Club, and Sir Thomas Malory's Morte Arthur. An English prose romance of Merlin was written about 1450, and a metrical Arthour and Merlin is probably fifty or sixty years older. A further Life of Arthur in English verse is supposed to have been composed about 1428. There is a metri-cal version of Renault de Beaujeu's Giglan, probably of the latter part of the 14th century. Two poems both entitled Morte Arthur exist, one written about 1390, which especially treats of King Arthur, and another belonging to the middle of the 15th century, of which the story of Lancelot is the subject-matter ; and there is a Scottish Lancelot of the Laik in verse, which was composed late in that century. A romance of the Seint Graal, in verse, written about 1350, was probably a translation of Robert de Borron's Joseph d'Arimathie. Between 1S38 and 1849 Lady Charlotte Guest printed and translated the Mabinogion (Children's Stories) from the Welsh MS. known as the Llijfr Coch o Hergest, tran-scribed late in the 14th century, and now preserved at Oxford, in the library of Jesus College. At first it was believed that these stories, so far as they agreed with the narratives of the printed French romances, were copies of the original legends used by Walter Map and the Borrons ; but there can be little doubt that only those portions which are not found in the romances are ot independent Celtic or Cambrian origin, while the remainder was derived from the French stories or poems of the 13th and 14th centuries.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL LIST OF EARLIEST EDITIONS OF CHIEF ROUND TABLE ROMANCES.—Partzifal und Titurel, in German verse, 2 vols, fol., 1477. This book is a translation by Wolfram von Eschenbach, about 1205, of Guyot's lost French poem, based upon Robert de Borron's Histoire du Graal.
Perceval, fol., Paris, 1530. A totally distinct work from the Franeo-G erman Partzifal mentioned above. Various poems in French and English of early date exist on the adventures of Perceval, but they are not to be identified with the prose romance.
Morte Arthur, fol., print, by William Caxton, 1485. Sir Thomas Malory's Eng-lish translation of the second French Arthurian compilation which had been made about 1250, and united Tristan with the so-called Lancelot.
Lancelot du Lac, 3 parts, fol., Rouen, 1488 ; and Paris, A. Vérard, 1494. This, the first Round Table compilation, was made about 1200, and embodied three or four tales which had previously had a separate existence. An Italian trans-lation appeared in 3 vols. Svo, Venice, 1558-59. A Spanish translation appears to be the Demanda del Sancto Grial, fol., Toledo, 1515, which may possibly be the whole Lancelot notwithstanding its name. A Dutch Roman van Lancelot of the 13th century was printed by Jonckbloet in 2 vols. 4to, 184(5-49, from a MS. It may not be a translation of the French romance. The Maitland Club printed in 1S39 a Lancelot du Lac in Scottish metre, from a MS. of the 15th century.
Tristan, fol., Rouen, 1489; and Paris, Vérard, about 1499. Don Tristan de Leonis, fol., Valladolid, 1501, is a Spanish translation. The Italian I dm Tristani, 2 vols. Svo, Venice, 1555, is a compilation of the two romances ot Tristan and his son Ysaie. The two stories were united also in the late Spanish versions, if not in the first edition of 1501. A Scottish poem on Sir Tristram was written by Thomas Rhymer of Ercildoune in the 13th century ; published by Sir Walter Seott. Various early poems on the same subject have been printed in Tristan by Francisque Michel, 2 vols. 12mo, 1835-37. A German poem of Tristan und Isolde, bygun by Gottfried of Strasburg early in the I3th century, and continued by others in the same century, was published at Berlin in 1821, 4to, by Groote, and by Von der Hagen in 2 vols. 8vo, Breslau, 1822. This poem and the Scottish one are supposed to be derived from a French Tristan in verse by a trouvère Thomas, which is included in Michel's Tristan. There exist also an Icelandic Saga af Tristani og Isond, of the 13th century, published in Muller's Saga-Bibliothek, and old popular chapbooks on the same subject in German, Danish, Italian, Bohemian, and modern Greek. The oldest German edition of the popular Tristrant was printed in 4lo at Augsburg in 1484.
Artus de Bretagne, fol. (no place), 1493 ; also at Lyons in 1496. An English translation was made by Lord Berners, Arthur of Lytell Brytayne, fol. (print, by Robert Redborne, no date, but probably about 1565).
Vie el Prophéties de Merlin, 3 vols, fol., Paris (ed. Vérard), 1498. There exist an Italian translation, Historia cli Merlino, made by Antonio Tedeschi in 1379, fol., Venice, 1480, and a Spanish translation, El Baladro del Sabio Merlin, fol., Burgos, 1498. The Lytel Treatys of the Byrth and Propheeye of Merlin, published by Wynkyn de Worde, 4to, 1510, is a popular poem ; and the Life of Merlin, 4to, 1641, is an original work by Thomas Heyvvood. The Early English Text-Society has published Merlin or the Early History of King Arthur (8vo, 1869-77), in prose, from an English MS. of the 15th century, which was made from a French original. There exists also an Arthour and Merlin in verse, written about 1400, which has been printed for the Abbotsford Club, 4to, 1838. Geoffrey of Monmouth's original De Vita et Vatieiniis Merlini, in verse, was printed by the Roxburghe Club in 1830, 4to. His prose narrative (portion of the Historia Britonum) was first printed in the Brittanniee utriusque Ilegum Origo, 4to, Paris, 1508, and afterwards better in the Heidelberg Script. Rerum. Britann., fol., 1587.
Gyron le Courtoys, fol., Paris, Vérard, no date (about 1501). Two old Italian translations of the 14th or 15th century have been printed from MSS. in Italy, 8vo, Verona, 1834, and Svo, Florence, 1835. Alaiuanni's Girone el Corlese is a poem on the subject of the romance, written for Francis I., 4to, Paris, 1548.
Histoire (et Queste) du S. Graal, fol., Paris, 1516. The Spanish Demanda del Sancto Grial and Baladro de Merlin have probably no connexion with this book, but are rather to be considered as drawn from the Lancelot. A French poetic Roman du Saint-Graal of the beginning of the 14th century has been published by Francisque Michel, 12ino, Bordeaux, 1841 ; and a prose one of earlier date (perhaps the remote original of the French romance printed in 1516) has been published by Hucher, 12mo, Le Mans, 1874. The Early English Text Society has printed (Svo, 1S71) a 14th-century poem, Joseph of Arimathea, derived from the earlier French. The English verse Seynt Graal, by Henry Lonelich, pub-lished by the Roxburghe Club, 4to, 1863-64, must be considered as derived from the Lancelot rather than from the Histoire du S. Graal.
Ysaie le Triste, fol., Paris, 1522. For Italian and Spanish translations see Tristan, above.
Meliadus de Leonnoys, fol,, Paris, 1528. Of this there exists an Italian trans-lation, Egregi Fatti del gran Re Meliadus, 2 vols. Svo, Venice (Aldo), 1559-60. Perceforest, 6 vols, fol., Paris, 1528.

(5) Charlemagne and his Twelve Peers.

The cycle of Franco-Teutonic or French romance of which the mythical history of Charles the Great forms the central design is, so far as its original literary elements are concerned, more ancient than the Franco-British cycle of Arthur and his knights. The reduction into prose of the old chansons de geste and of the poèmes cycliques which followed them was, however, of much later date than the similar conversions of Bound Table poems; and the 15th century prose romances are so mangled and altered from the character of the earlier stories in verse that without a short notice of the latter it would be impossible to get a true notion of the richness and copiousness of Frankish romance.

We know from Eginhard that the Frankish heroic ballads were reduced to writing by Charlemagne's order, and thus the first step was taken which led to the creation of similar ballads about himself and his principal warriors. His own large and catholic spirit seems to have embraced all the people within his dominions, and thus indirectly brought about the official employment of the French language in the famous compact between his grandsons in 841. He was then only twenty-eight years dead, yet his influence was still so mighty that even the Gauls and Aquitanians are declared in a 9th-century chronicle to have gloried in bearing the name of Franks. This both implies an amal-gamation of the two races more complete than is usually believed, and accounts for the creation of French as well as of Frankish ballads on the life and exploits of Charle-magne in the second half of the 9th century. The number of persons who could speak only Theotisc (Teutonic lan-guage) and of those who could speak the two languages was of course constantly diminishing, and the chanson de geste soon displaced the Heldengedicht within the limits Early of modern France. Of all the French ballads current in French the 9th and 10th centuries some have perished utterly, ballads, ^hers survive only in later refusions; the most ancient now extant is the Chanson de Roland, in the modified form which was given to it soon after 1066 by a Norman called Turold. This poem contains so many references to others on Charlemagne and his douze pairs or paladins as to make it certain that such a ballad-literature existed in the 9th and 10th centuries. None of the existing chansons de geste represents those older forms; all are rifaci-menti of the 12th and 13th centuries, and bear evidence of additions, interpolations, and arbitrary changes. In the 13th century we find the older episodical ballads re-arranged in the form of "cyclic poems," and falling into three groups, which take each its name from the central personage or subject. One is the Geste of the king (Charlemagne, his father, and grandfather); the next is the Geste of Provence or of Garin de Montglane; and the third, the most heterogeneous, is the Geste of Doon of Histórico- Mayence. Each of these is composed of many separate mythical parts, but the first may be generally described as the entire works. mythical history of Charles the Great, his family, and his faithful peers; the second a separate and independent set of narratives concerning his conquest of Narbonne; the third a history of his wars with rebellious vassals and with traitors, including Ganelon, through whom the peers were defeated and slain at Koncesvalles. The number and names of the peers are variously given in nearly all the poems, but Roland and Oliver are included in all the lists, united as in a proverbial English phrase. Eoland is the daring warrior, Oliver the wise one; the one is the Achilles, the other the Ulysses of the Carolingian epopee. Many of the early chansons give the name of Turpin, arch-bishop of Rheims (an actual historical contemporary of Charlemagne), as one of the, pairs,—warrior and priest com-bined ; and there is a chronicle bearing his name which has furnished the later romancers with a goodly propor-tion of their matter. This Pseudo-Chronicle of Turpin was written in Latin, by various hands and in various places between 1000 and 1150, being apparently constructed from the chansons for the purpose of forging history to suit monastic ends. It took its final and existing form between 1160 and 1180, when edited by Géoffroy de Brueil, and was for many centuries regarded as actual his-tory. This work was not the first so-called history which embodied monastic fiction in the narrative of Charlemagne's career. A monk of St Gall wrote about 890 a chronicle De Gestis Karoli Magni, based partly upon oral tradition, in which certain fabulous incidents appeared for the first time, such as Pippin's fight with the lion, and the conversa-tion about the Iron Emperor between Ottokar the Frank (better known as Ogier the Dane) and the Lombard king Desiderius, on the walls of Pavia, when Charlemagne was advancing to besiege it. Another fabulous incident of great moment in the romances is Charlemagne's sup-posititious journey to the Holy Land, which was related for the first time by Benedict, monk of St Andr6, about 968, in his Descriptio qualiter Carolus M. Clavum et Coronam Domini a Constantinopli Aquisgrani attulerit.

A great deal of historical truth underlies the absurdities of the Turpin Chronicle and the rhapsodies of the chansons de geste. Compare ROLAND, LEGEND OF. In fact all the older poetic literature of this cycle is based upon purely historical events and real personages; it is only at a later date that the events are multiplied or variously misapplied, and that the personages also are arbitrarily distorted and augmented, according to the fancy and local sentiments of the various waiters. As for the language in which the older poems were written, the idea that they were chiefly the work of troubadours in the langue d'oc is now aban-doned. Gaston Paris holds the curious theory that the French language (langue d'oil) was popularly current over the north of Italy, instancing the works of Rusticien of Pisa as an illustration, besides certain works in Italianized French which belong to this class. Such a notion cannot be accepted readily, as we know that the langue d'oc was the general language of southern France, western Spain, and north-west Italy. But it is possible that the French language (langue d'oil) may have been used as a general literary vehicle for the Charlemagne cycle of poetical fiction, and that Rusticien or Rustighello may have com-piled an abridgment of the Frankish stories. Such a work, if it ever existed, has perished; and it is in the Italian language of Tuscany that we find the first prose comjhla-tion of Carolingian romance. The Reali di Francia (Princes of France), if it had been completed, would have occupied a corresponding position to the Morte Arthur of the British cycle; for, while no such popular compilation appears to have ever been made in France itself and in the French tongue (unless the late 15th-century Fiera-bras may be considered to take that rank), the Reali in verse and in prose was current in Italy early in the 14th century. From some peculiarities in the language it is conjectured that the author, although writing in Tuscan, was a Venetian. In France at the same period we find only the separate fictions, mostly in verse, but a few in prose. The first French prose compilation of the whole cycle was made by David Aubert in 1458 for Philip of Bur-gundy ; but it was dead-born and has never been printed. The second, in three books, was made a few years later by Jean Bagnyon, for Henri Bolomier, canon of Lausanne ; it was first printed in 1478, and is entitled in some editions La Conqueste que Jist Charlemagne es Espaignes, and in others Fierabras; both titles are insufficient, having apparently been merely created to supply the lack of a general heading. The first section is a summary chronicle of the history of the Franks from Clovis to Charlemagne, the second an abridgment of the old poem of Fierabras, and the third an account of the Spanish expedition, taken from the Pseudo-Turpin. This work became very popular in and out of France, and most readers during the 16th and 17th centuries derived their entire knowledge of the Charlemagne romance from it. Although the French prose works of the cycle were for the most part very late in their construction, there were three French prose transla-tions or adaptations of the Turpin Chronicle executed soon after 1200.
The names as well as the offices of the douze pairs varied

Charle- considerably in the earlier clmnsons. The final conception magna s appears to be that which is contained in the Fierabras; pa a< ms ku^. tile substitution of new personages for the old ones is so great that it is not possible to regard the clouze pairs as a definite set of dramatis personx on the stage. Nor indeed do any of the heroes of the printed prose romances belong to that society, however frequently its members appear in their stories. Originally it would seem that some fortuitous coincidence between the number of the apostles and the number of the captains who headed Charlemagne's evangelizing expedition into Spain had been utilized by some of the monkish legendaries, and thus the early chansons became affected with a mystic respect for the douze pairs. But each writer allowed himself the licence of excluding and including any warrior he chose in chat number. The Pseudo-Turpin makes no reference to such a society, although it gives the names of the more celebrated knights. The full story of Roland has no prose romance to itself (see ROLAND, LEGEND OF). The story of Oliver is in similar case, unless the prose romance of Galien, Oliver's son, may be held to embody it. Regnault de Montauban (the chief of the four sons of Aymon), Huon of Bordeaux, Amys and Milles, Jourdain, Galien, Maugis, Mabrian, and many other heroes of the printed romances are unknown to the earliest ballad-histories of Charlemagne and his barons. Ogier the Dane seems to have grown out of two historical personages, a real Othger or Ottokar, a Frankish margrave of Charlemagne's time, and a real Olgar or Hulger, a Danish or Norse warrior who plundered Aix-la-Chapelle some seventy odd years after the Frankish Othger had accompanied Roland into Spain. Othger fought with the Lombards against Charlemagne in 773; and Amys and Milles, in the battle in which they won the crown of martyrdom, are said to have fallen by his hand. Beaten by the emperor, he became his vassal and five years later commanded the advanced guard of the army whose rear-guard was destroyed at Roncesvalles. M. Gaston Paris has admirably discussed the historical bear-ings and the various phases of the original chansons de geste in his Histoire Poetique de Charlemagne, but has dismissed with a brief reference all the printed prose romances we are now about to consider. Reali di The Jleali di Francia exists both in metrical and in prose form, F<-ancia. an(J it is difficult to decide which is the earlier; the metrical version was certainly current in the 13th century, and there seems little reason to doubt that the prose story was in existence before 1300. The latter was first printed at Modena in 1491. It is a general work on the subject of Frankish romantic history, and is divided into six books, of which the subjects are as follows:—(1) Clovis and Rizier ; (2) Fioravante and 'Rizier; (3) Ottaviano de Leone (the emperor Octavian and his sons Florent and Lion); (4) Buovo d'Antonna (Bevis of Hampton); (5) Buovo avenged by his sons Guido and Sinibaldo and King William of England ; (6) birth of Charlemagne, death of Pippin and his natural sons. Thus we may conclude that it was, so far as printed under the name Reali, the first part of a compilation of all the Charlemagne cyclical stories. The first book of the continuation Aspramonte, a translation from the French poem of Aspremont, or rather a prose composition from an Italian version of that poem, exists in MS. The -Reali di Francia has been drawn upon by many later writers. Pseudo- Chronicle of the Pseudo-Turpin.—The early part of this work Turpin. was evidently forged by some monk interested in exalting the glory of St James's shrine at Padron in Galicia (Spain), before it was transferred to Compostella. He represents St James as appearing in successive visions to Charlemagne, urging him to conquer Spain, the land in which the saint's bones are laid and of which the Saracens are masters. Charlemagne advances with a Frankish army and besieges Pamplona, which is invincible to his arms, but falls a prey to his prayers. After further exploits and the founda-tion of many churches, he returns home, but is brought out again very speedily by news that the Saracen king, Aigoland, has once more seized the country. This king is borrowed from the older chansons relating to the war against the Lombards; but for the 12th century all Charlemagne's foes were Saracens. The topo-graphical difficulty is made light of, and Aspremont is placed in Spain. Roland, Oliver, and Ganelon (afterwards infamous for his treachery, the hereditary result of his kinship to the family of which Doon of Mayence was the head) distinguish themselves; Aigoland is beaten and killed. Charlemagne next attacks Navarre, where his paladins enter into single combat with the heathen giant Ferracute, who vanquishes all but Roland, and is overcome by the latter by means of a stratagem. Cordova is next conquered and taken possession of, and Charlemagne retraces his steps, but re-members that he has left two other Saracen kings unsubdued— Marsilius and Baligaut—in Saragossa. He sends Ganelon to claim tribute from them ; they contrive to rouse the predestined spirit of traitorousness in the envoy, and he returns with a false tale, which leads the monarch to forget military precautions by dividing his army into two portions. He himself with the advanced half passes the Pyrenees in safety, but Roland, Oliver, and the rear-guard are suddenly attacked in the pass of Roncesvalles. All perish in the fight except Roland, who, mortally wounded, dies alone in the wild mountain gorge, after having flung his famous sword away, and blown such a blast upon his horn that it bursts and the sound reaches the ears of Charlemagne. The emperor returns to Ronces-valles, slays the Saracen host, recovers the body of Roland and gets it embalmed, and causes Ganelon to be torn to pieces by wild horses. After a time his health suffers and his death approaches. Turpin becomes aware of a multitude of demons who are preparing to carry off the emperor's soul on account of his sins. They are foiled, however, by St Denis, who, in return for Charlemagne's bene-volence towards the church, rescues his soul and bears it to heaven.

Fierabras. —The basis of this romance was the lost poem upon the amir Balan, a Saracen leader conquered by Charlemagne in Italy ; the rest of the book was put together from Turpin and other sources so as to form the one general prose romance of Charle-magne. The scene is changed from Italy to Spain in the prose romance. Fierabras, the giant, is son of Balan, and, after having sacked Rome, is met by the Frankish host; Oliver encounters and defeats him in single combat ; the giant is converted and baptized by the name of Florent, and receives half his father's kingdom when his father is conquered and slain. Floripas, sister of Fierabras, marries Gui de Bourgogne, who takes the other half. The Spanish prose Historia del Emperador Carlo Magno, printed in 1528, is a translation ; there is also a German version.

Guerin de Montglave (or properly Garin de Montglane).—ThisGarinde romance of the 15th century is based upon the 13th-century poems Mont-ón Girard de Vienne and Aimeri de Narbonne of "le clerc Bertrand." glane. It is a spirited and entertaining fiction relating the adventures of the four sons of Garin, one of the heroes of the elder Provencal cycle, and is misnamed, in so far as it contains only the story of his family, not of himself. The four sons are sent forth to seek ad-ventures. Arnaud, the eldest, asserts his right to the dukedom of Aquitaine against a usurper who has succeeded on his uncle's death. He is treacherously persuaded to seek the hand of the princess Fregonde, daughter of the Saracen sultan of Lombardy. His traitorous kinsman, Hernault, contrives to set Arnaud and the sultan at enmity, and Arnaud is flung into a dungeon, where the daughter, ready to accept Christianity for love of him, secretly visits him. Hernault apostatizes and goes back with a promise of the sultan's help to conquer Aquitaine for himself, but turns aside from some qualm of conscience to confess his sins to a giant hermit, who happens to have been an old comrade of Garin. Thus learning the peril of Arnaud, the giant hermit Ribastre slays Hernault, and, seeking assistance from another old comrade, a converted magician named Perdigón, sallies forth to the aid of the imprisoned hero. In disguise he obtains admittance to the captive and the princess, baptizes the latter, kills the jailer, and sends Arnaud forth free to reconquer Aquitaine and to bring aid, while he and the lady hold the dungeon-tower, which is at once besieged by the sultan. After numerous fights, in which Perdigon's magic is the chief actor, Ribastre and the princess get away without having received help from Aquitaine, and on reaching that land find Arnaud a prisoner in the power of Hcrnault's uncle. Ribastre kills the latter; Arnaud is restored to his duchy and marries Fregonde ; the sultan turns Christian; and all ends well. But the romance does not close here; it proceeds to narrate the honours which fall to the other sons, Milon do Pouille, Regnier de Genes, and Girard de Vienne, or de Toulouse, through the favour of Charlemagne, who feels himself bound to Garin's family in consequence of the obligation attached to a rash game of chess formerly lost by him to that hero. However, when Arnaud's son has grown up, an accidental affront put upon the empress by him changes Charlemagne's friendly feeling to hate. He makes a long war upon Girard in Vienne, who is aided by his brother, and it is agreed at last to settle the affair by a duel between Roland, the emperor's nephew, and Oliver, the son of Regnier de Genes. The two had previously become fast friends, and Roland loves Aude, Oliver's sister ; consequently, although they fight with great vigour and equality of strength, they throw aside their swords in the middle of the combat and embrace one another as worthy brothers-in-arms. A fitting compromise is found between the warring parties in an agreement that they shall all unite and attack the Saracen conquerors of Spain. Then begins the famous expedition which ended at Roncesvalles.

Galien le Rhetore.—This romance was first printed in 1500. It is partly of late composition, although sufficiently ancient to have rendered the word "rhetore" (i.e., rhetorized, or narrated in elegant prose) incomprehensible at the time of its impression. The word was supposed to mean "restored," and to indicate the restoration of chivalry by Galien. The chief substance of the story was the ancient tale of Charlemagne's journey to the East and the Turpin
Chronicle. Hugues, emperor of Constantinople, at first receives the Frankish emperor and his peers courteously, but is informed by a spy of certain vaunting expressions to which, as is the Frankish manner, they have given utterance amongst themselves after supper. These "gabes," as they are called, are merely frolicsome braggaaocio, spoken in lightheartedness, and not intended to convey any serious intention. The spy and "the Greek emperor, however, take them as the threats of dangerous magicians; the Franks are seized and menaced with death if they fail to fulfil their words. Oliver is first put to the test; his speech had had reference to the Greek princess Jacqueline, and might better have befitted the lips of a Parisian gamin of to-day than of a young paladin. He, however, awakens a tender interest in the lady's heart, and she indulgently informs her father the next morning that the knight's boast has been fulfilled. Hugues requires that the others shall also exhibit their power, which they do to his satisfaction, partly by celestial succour and partly by the use of mother-wit. He finally dismisses them with presents. After Oliver has gone, Jacqueline becomes the mother of Galien, who grows up in time to hear of the expedition to Spain and to arrive just too late for the battle in the pass of Roncesvalles. His dying father there acknowledges him, and Galien signalizes himself in the renewed fighting in which Charlemagne takes reprisals for the loss of his peers and the treachery of Ganelon. After various deeds of valour in the West, Galien returns to the East, saves his mother from a shameful death, and resumes the imperial crown.

Milles et Milles et Amys.—The prose romance in its existing form was Amys. written in the 15th century, and first printed by Yerard about 1503. The martyrdom of the two friends is supposed to have taken place in 774 in Charlemagne's war against the Lombards, and their story was popularly current in the 12th century. Milles was the son of Aneeaume, count of Clermont, and Amis the son of the count's seneschal. Milles's parents celebrate his birth by making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. During their adventures and captivity in the East Milles is robbed of his inheritance at home and Amys is brought up under a feigned name. They enter in to the closest friendship and set out for Constantinople, where Milles discovers his captive mother acting as nurse to the Greek princess Sidoine, whom by her assistance he weds, after having taken a chief part in forcing the sultan of Acre to raise the siege of Constantinople. He becomes emperor of Byzantium, but after a while returns to France with Amys, regains possession of his estates, and makes Amys a duke. Hearing that the Saracens have again attacked Constantinople and that his Greek wife has perished in the flames, he allows himself to be seduced by Bellisant, the daughter of Charlemagne, who, however, makes an honest man of him by marriage and behaves honourably ever after. Amys also gets married. Then the two friends also go on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, from which Amys returns stricken with leprosy. His wife refuses to receive him, but he is carefully tended by Milles in his own castle ; and now the most striking episode in the story takes place. Amys learns in a dream that he can only be healed by bathing in the blood of his friend's offspring and tells Milles of it. The latter is painfully affected, but does not hesitate to strike off the heads of his two children. Amys is cured and the devotion of Milles repaid by a miracle from heaven: the children's heads are replaced upon their shoulders. Afterwards Milles and Amys set out on another pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostella. Ogier the Dane, then at war with Charlemagne, meets and treacherously, slays them on their way homeward. A continuation follows, narrating the adventures of the infant children of Milles. The widow of Amys plots for their destruction, but they are zealously tended by a wise ape, which shares their fortunes until separated from them by malice and mishap. Florisset becomes a Saracen leader in Venice and Aneeaume a brave warrior in the army of Charlemagne. The two brothers have a desperate encounter in the war which takes place, but are recognized by the ape (which has already brought about the punishment of the wicked widow of Amys, in a similar fashion to that of the celebrated dog of Moutargis). A restoration takes place : the two young men are acknowledged the emperor's grandsons, and the ape dies of joy.

Jourclain de Blaves (or de Blayc).—The prose romance, first printed in 1520, is altered from a 15th-century poem. It is afliliated to Milles et Amys, the hero being the grandson of Amys. He undergoes the most varied fortunes : he throws his wife with his yet unborn child into the sea, enclosed in a box, when the vessel bear-ing himself and his warriors is in peril of shipwreck ; he searches for her some years later, and finds her in a refuge, to which she has fled from the love of the man who fished her out of the sea, and who exposed her baby-girl at the birth ; and next, when hunt-ing in a forest, he finds his daughter running wild in company with a bitch and her young. This is a reflexion of the story of Apollonius of Tyre, and is rather a dull work.

Doon of Mayence. —Doon or Doolin of Mayence is the hero of a Doon of 14th-century poem, adapted as a prose romance in the 15th cen- Mayence. tury, first printed by Vérard in 1501. He is represented as defying and almost defeating his lord the emperor, whom he treats at first with disrespect. In his earlier history he appears as a son of Gui of Mayence, who, as penance for an unintentional crime, retires to a hermitage. On his disappearance his wife is accused of murder, condemned to death, and her children banished. Doon meets his father and returns to fight as his mother's champion, conquers his enemies, and assumes his rightful possessions. He falls in love with a Saracen princess and wins her by force, with the help of Charlemagne, after the episode of his quarrel with the emperor. The lady's father has been aided by the king of Denmark ; Doon, after his victory, seizes the Danish crown, which he transmits through his son Geoffrey to his grandson Ogier.

Ogier le Danois.—There are twelve chansons upon the story of Ogier the this hero, dating from the 12th and 13th centuries, and based Dane, upon still older poems now lost. The trouvères Raimbert and Adenez le Roi were among the authors. The story was reeomposed in prose, from the poem of the latter writer, probably in the second half of the 14th century. The fairies who preside at Ogier's birth and endow him with many gifts are a later addition to the story ; one of them is Morgan la Fay, King Arthur's sister, who foretells that at the end of his career he shall go to live with her in im-mortal youth at Avalon. While yet a little boy he is sent as a hostage to Charlemagne and is brought up at the imperial court. When fourteen years of age he is banished to the castle of St Omer, where he falls in love with the young châtelaine, but is soon afterwards ordered out of his prison to accompany Charle-magne on an expedition to Italy against the invading Saracens. Here, for the first time, he is subjected to the hatred and envy of young Chariot, the emperor's son ; but on the triumph of the Frankish arms he accompanies the monarch in his return to Paris and learns that his father is dead and that the châtelaine has borne him a son. He departs to assume the crown of Denmark, but lays it down after a few years and returns to Charlemagne. His son has grown up and is one day engaged in a game of chess with Chariot, who, having lost it, becomes irritated, and kills him with the chess-board (an incident frequently met with in old fiction). Ogier, in his fury for revenge, uses such language that he is com-pelled to fly, and betakes himself to the court of the Lombard king Desiderius, then at war with the emperor. It is on this occasion that the famous dialogue takes place on the walls of Pavia. Desiderius or Didier wonders, as he and Ogier look forth together, at the great number of the Frankish warriors advancing over the plain, and, as each successive body of troops, ever increasing in strength and grandeur, makes its appearance, he says, "Is this the emperor ? " Ogier to each question answers, " Not yet," till at last he cries, "When thou shaft see the fields bristling with an iron harvest, and the Po and the Ticino, swollen with sea-floods, inun-dating the walls of the city with iron billows, then perhaps shall Karl be nigh at hand." Soon after the Iron Emperor with his mightiest host darkens the horizon, and Didier falls smitten with terror. The Lombard king is beaten ; Ogier is made prisoner while sleeping, and brought to the emperor. He still refuses to be re-conciled until the monarch yields Chariot to his revenge. Charle-magne at last gives way ; Ogier, when just on the point of striking off the prince's head, abstains, and foregoes his vengeance. Then, returning to his old station as one of the emperor's chief paladins, he fights an invading army and slays their giant leader. He next saves the king of England's daughter Clarice from captivity, marries her, and is recognized as king of that country ; but he abandons for a second time the kingly dignity and sets out for the conquest of the Holy Land. Whilst returning to France, he is shipwrecked, comes upon a diamond castle,. invisible by day, and finds himself in Avalon in the company of Morgan la Fay. She puts the ring of perpetual youth on his finger, the crown of forgetfulness on his head, and he lives a life of joy for two cen-turies. Then the crown is taken off; he remembers his old life, and betakes himself to the new and degenerate French kingdom which has succeeded to the empire of Charlemagne. After restor-ing the spirit of the older knighthood, vanquishing the Norse invaders, and passing through some curious adventures in con-nexion with his ring, he is carried away by Morgan la Fay and disappears for ever.

Meurvin.—This was a romance of late origin, first printed at Meurvin. Paris in 1531. Meurvin was the son of Ogier by Morgan la Fay, and is a personage of little interest, except for his connexion with the romance of the Knight of the Swan, whose ancestor he is repre-sented to be through his son Oriant.

The Four Sons of Aymon ; or Regnault de Montauban and his Four Three Brothers.—This, one of the most popular and delightful of sons of the romances of this cycle, was printed many times in the 15th Aymon. and 16th centuries, and in later abridgments as a chap-book.

Adapted from a 13th-century poem, it has been considered as the work of Huon de Villeneuve based upon earlier chansons. Aymon de Dordogne, brother of Beuves d'Aigremont and of Girard de Rous-sillon, brings his four sons to the court of Charlemagne. They are knighted by the emperor, who makes a present of the marvellous steed Bayard to the eldest, Regnault. This is the charger pictorially represented as bearing all the four champions on his tack at once. Bertholais, the nephew of Charlemagne, plays one day a game of chess with Regnault, and, losing, petulantly strikes his adversary, who smites him dead with the board. All the four sons of Aymon are compelled to fly and war is immediately declared against them as outlaws, in which their unhappy father, as the feudal vassal of Charlemagne, is obliged to take an active part. Numerous incidents of deadly peril and adventure on both sides are recorded, and Regnault displays so much daring, skill, and magnanimity as to create in the reader's mind a hatred of the ungenerous monarch who relentlessly pursues the brothers. It will be remarked how singularly the character of Charlemagne has deteriorated from the earlier type. The famous Bayard plays a notable part in the story. On one occasion, by the help of his cousin, the enchanter Maugis (son of Charlemagne's assassinated enemy Beuves), Regnault captures the emperor, Roland, Ogier, Naimes of Bavaria, and Turpin. Although they are in his power, the chivalrous knight and his brothers merely kneel to Charlemagne and beg for peace and pardon. The monarch's hatred is implac-able ; but Regnault nobly sets his captives free, and the war begins again. Regnault, wdio is lord of Montauban, a castle given him by Yvon, sovereign of Gascony, for having repelled a Saracen invasion, retires from the strife and makes a pilgrimage to Pales-tine. On his return he goes as a simple mason to aid in the build-ing of Cologne cathedral, and is there slain by the treachery of his fellow-workmen. Maugis Maugis d'Aigremont.—The special romance bearing this title d'Aigre- (first printed about 1520) is not the only one in which Maugis the mont. enchanter plays a prominent part. He is originally derived from the 13th-century poem on the four sons of Aymon, to whom he furnished material assistance in the struggle against Charlemagne. He also appears as a comrade and helper of Renaud in the Conquest of Trebisond, and again in the romance of Mabrian (1530), in which he is elected pope, and finally perishes in a cave to which Charlemagne sets fire. These are all three of late origin ; and the Conqueste de Trebisonde (s.a., about 1520) is not even of French com-position, but is adapted from the 14th-century Italian poem of Trabisonda. The four sons of Aymon, especially Regnault (Tasso's hero Rinaldo), and their kinsman Maugis seem to have been especially dear to the Italian imagination. Gerard Gerard d'Euyhrate.—This, printed in 1549, and professedly trans-d'Eu- lated from a metrical Walloon original, is an absurd tale of magic, phrate. containing nothing except names to connect it with the ancient poem on Girard de Fratte, one of the vassals who warred against the emperor. Although split into two personages in course of time, Girard de Fratte (not d'Euphrate) and Girard de Roussillon seem to have been originally identical. Girard was one of the sons of Doon of Mayence, and therefore brother to Aymon. Con-sequently this romance may be placed in connexion with the Four Sons of Aymon, and also serves to link it with Garin de Montglane, as it is evident that Girard de Vienne in the latter romance is only another form of the older Girard. Huon of Huon of Bordeaux.—This interesting story was compiled in prose Bor- in 1454, from a late form of a poem which was current towards the deanx. end of the 12th century, and which has often been attributed to the trouvère Huon de Villeneuve, but without reason. Huon, duke of Guienne, one of the paladins of Charlemagne, is on his way to Paris to pay his respects to his liege lord, when he is attacked by the malicious and envious Chariot, whom he kills in self-defence. The emperor grieves so much for his son's death that he dooms the unlucky Huon to death also, notwithstanding the intercession of all the peers and councillors. At last Huon is pardoned, but only on condition that he shall make a journey to the East and bring back from Baghdad a part of the Saracen amir's beard and four of his back teeth, after having slain one of the Saracen lords and kissed the amir's daughter before his face. These impossible tasks he is enabled to accomplish by the help of the pretty dwarf Oberon, who presents him with a magical cup and horn. A loud blast upon the latter suffices to bring Oberon and 100,000 warriors to his aid. At the most critical instant his magic powers fail him, simply because he had been guilty of deceit in announcing himself as a Mohammedan in order to gain entrance. The princess Esclar-monde has, however, fallen in love with him and succours him. He is at length brought out to fight the giant Agrapard, who has invaded Baghdad ; he conquers him, and tries to persuade the amir to turn Christian. Again when he is in danger, Oberon saves him ; and the teeth and beard are taken from the dead Saracen. Then begins a series of adventures full of peril and distress. Huon over-comes strong temptations practised on his chastity and the deadly straits in which he is placed by Saracen foes and treacherous kins-men, and at last makes Esclarmonde his lawful wife and justifies himself before Charlemagne. Oberon always makes his appearance when the needs are sorest, and in fact plays the best part in the narrative. This romance has no connexion with the actual history of Charlemagne ; but it is an attractive work of imagination.

Valentin et Orson. —This well-known and charming story, first Valen-printed in 1489, relates the lives of two brothers exposed in in- tine anj, fancy, one of whom is suckled by a bear. After many adventures, Orson, they regain their rightful position and each learns his relationship. The events are supposed to take place in France in the time of Pippin. It is a composition of the 15th century.

Octavien, or Florent et Lyon, is a similar story, never printed in Octavien French, although written in that language, probably in the 15th century, from an episode of the Beali di Francia.

Beuve d'Hanstone, or, as he is called in English, Bevis of Hampton, Bevis of is the subject of an old French story which was embodied in the Hamp-Beali, and is only connected with Charlemagne by the mention of tou. King Pippin and the hero's kinship with the sons of Aymon. As a French prose romance it was printed by Vérard about 1500. It had been printed separately in Italian at Bologna in 1480. An old English poem on Bevis was in the 15th or 16th century turned into a prose romance, and was printed about 1560.
Morgant le Géant is only a translation of Pulci's poem Morgante Maggiore, and Guérin Mesquin is similarly translated from an Italian prose recomposition of an old Italian poem. Little more than the names was derived from the old Charlemagne chansons de geste; and the same may be said of the famous poems of Boiardo, Berni, and Ariosto upon Roland (Orlando).

Bibliography of the first printed Prose Romances, including Texts and Translations.—Reali di Franza, fol., Modena, 1491. Pseudo-Turpinichronica, fol., Frank-fort, 1566 (forming a portion of Schard's Rerum German. IV. vetustiores chrono-graphi) ; Chronique composée par Turpin, fol., Paris, 1476 (forming part of the Chroniques de S. Denys ; first independent edition, Paris, 1527). Galien Rethoré, fol., Paris, Vérard, 1500. Fierabras le Géant, fol., Geneva, 1478—printed also under the title of Conqueste du grand roy Charlemagne, fol., Lyons, 14S6 ; in English, Charles the Great, Caxton, 14S5 ; in Spanish, 1528. Guerin de Mon-glave, fol., Paris, 151S. Doolin de Mayence, fol., Paris, Vérard, 1501. Ogier le Danois, fol., Paris, Vérard, c. 1498. Quatre Filz Aymon, fol., Lyons, c. 1480; in English, The Foure Sonnes of Aymon, fol., Caxton ; in Spanish, Reynaldos de Montalvan, fol., Seville, 1525 (translated from an imprinted Italian ver-sion of the Quatre Filz and the Trebisonde united) ; Conqueste de Trebisonde (Regnault de Montauban), 4to, Paris, c. 1520. Chronique de Mabrian, fol., Paris, 1530. Maugist d'Aygremont, 4to, Paris, c. 1520. Beuves d'Anthonne et la belle Josienne, fol., Paris, Vérard, c. 1500 ; in English, Syr Bevis of Hampton, 4to, W. Copland, c. 1560. Roman de Meurvin, fds d'Oger le Danois, 8vo, Paris, 1531. Gerard d'Euphrate, fol., Paris, 1549 ; Gérard, de Roussillon, Lyons, c. 1530. Milles et Amys, fol., Paris, Vérard, c. 1503 ; in Italian, Milles e Amis, 4to, Venice, 1503 ; Jourdain de Blares, fol., Paris, 1520. Huon de Bordeaulx, fol., Paris, 1516 ; in English, Huon of Bordeux, Copland, c. 1540. Valentin et Orson, fob, Lyons, 14S9 ; in English, Valentine and Orson, 4to, ed. Copland, c. 1560 ; in Italian, Valentino ed Orsone, Svo, Venice, 1557. Clamades et Clermonde, fol., Lyons, 1480 ; in Spanish, Clamades y Claramonda, 4to, Burgos, 152]. [Octavien:] Florent et Lyon, 4to, Paris, s.a. ; in German, Keyser Oclavianus, fol., Strasburg, 1535. Morgant le Géant, fol., Pans, 1519. Guérin Mesquin, 4to, 1530 ; in Italian, Guerino Meschino, fol., Padua, 1473; in Spanish, Guerino Mesquine, Seville, 1512.

(c) Spanish Cycle : Amadis and Palmerin.

Arthur had become in Britain not only a national hero Am ait., of romance but also a leading figure around whom might of Gaul, be grouped the adventures of subordinate knights. Charle-magne filled a similar place for French writers, but had the advantage of being a more distinct historical character than Arthur. In the Iberian peninsula, where we find the next great cycle of stories, the circumstances which pro-duced the national hero (the Cid) were still progressive, and his history was too real to melt into such romantic fiction as dealt in France and England with remote and shadowy paladins and the wonders of fairyland. There-fore, while the Cid had an ever-present reality in ballads, the earliest appearance of prose romance in Spain was in an artificial imitation of the Franco-British cycle. As it was a work of great merit, its fictitious hero became, as it were, the central figure in the stories which followed and which bore to one another a strong family likeness. Most of the chief heroes are illegitimate, like Amadis ; the adven-tures of two brothers are told; and there is much similarity of incident and character. Many of the scenes are laid in Constantinople. Amadis de Gaula is the poetical sire of an extraordinary series of romances, which in the words of Cervantes form an "inumerable linaje," and is itself the most interesting and remarkable of them. Although its reputation is due to the Spanish redaction of Mont-alvo, there was an earlier Portuguese version by Vasco de Lobeira (d. 1403), a gentleman of the court of Joâo I.

At the end of the 16th century a manuscript of this ver-sion was in the possession of the dukes of Aveiro at Lisbon, but since the middle of the 18th century all traces of it have been lost. There is, however, reason to believe that the earliest form of the story was in Castilian (c. 1250 V), also entirely lost. In a moral poem, El Rimado de Palacio, written about 1400, we find Pedro Lopez de Ayala speaking of having wasted his youth with "Libres de desvaneos e mentiras probadas Amadis e Lanzarote," which is sufficient to prove that Amadis existed about the period 1350-60. There is also a reference to Galaor, brother of Amadis, in the chronicle of Ramon Muntaner (1325-28), as well as to Tristan, Lancelot, and "other knights of the Round Table." There are several allusions in the Cancionero of Baena (1440-50) to an ancient version, one especially to its being " en très lybros." The earliest form is likely to have been in verse. The 'author was well acquainted with the Arthurian legends, and we find a marked imitation of Tristan and especially Lancelot. Many of the names indicate a Celtic origin : Gaula cer-tainly means Wales and not France, as they who insist upon a French original of the romance would lead us to believe. There still remains much that is entirely novel. In the words of M. Baret, to whom the literary history of this romance owes so much—

"Si, par la tradition primitive, VAmadis de Gaule dérive de la source commune des romans de la Table Ronde, si même il a existé une version Portugaise, c'est néanmoins à l'Espagne que doit de-meurer l'honneur d'avoir créé, sur un thème ancien, une composi-tion originale, en introduisant dans un cadre emprunté la nuance particulière de sentiments et l'art nouveau qui donnent à notre roman son importance et sa valeur spéciales " (De VAmadis, p. 21).

Of the primitive Amadis, probably in three books, which charmed the youth of Ayala nothing is known. The prose romance we now possess was written about 1465 by Garci-Ordonez de Montalvo, governor of Medina del Campo, to whom we may assign all traces of a spirit later than the first years of the 14th century, and to whom the whole of the fourth book may be due. This book is more refined and more romantic than the others. One of the chief reasons of the popularity of this version is the happy manner in which the improvement in manners is indicated. For the first time in chivalric romances we find distinct traces of the personality of the writer. The tastes, feelings, and prejudices of Spain towards the end of the 15th century are well expressed, without loss of the high chivalry of an earlier and simple time. It was first printed at Saragossa in 1508. Within the next fifty years thirteen or fourteen more editions issued from the press, and Amadis became fully established as the popular hero of Spanish romance. When the Spaniards first saw Mexico in 1519 they were reminded of the enchantments of the story.

Francis I. made acquaintance with the Amadis during his Spanish captivity and directed Nicolas de Herberay, seigneur of Essarts, a gentleman of Picardy, to translate it. The first four books of the original work were first printed in French in 1540. De Her-beray also translated most of the continuations down to the ninth book. He died about 1552, and Boileau, Gohorry, and others con-tinued the work. Estienne Pasquier, in his Recherclhcs de la France (1611), alludes to the popularity of the French Amadis, "dans lequel vous pouvez cueillir toutes les belles fleurs de nostre langue Françoyse. Jamais livre ne feut embrassé avec tant de faveur que cestuy." De Herberay gives as his reason for the translation, "pour ce qu'il est tout certain qu'il fust premier mis en nostre langue Françoyse, estant Amadis Gaulois et non Espagnol. Et qu'ainsi soit, j'en ai trouvé encores quelque reste d'un vieil livre escrit à la main en langage Picard." This contention, which cannot seriously be held, was insisted upon by M. de Tressan in his abridgment of the Amadis de Garde (1779), wherein a French origin for the first three books is claimed upon the authority of certain MSS. in that language. The commencement of an Italian translation of the Amadis romances was printed at Venice in 1546, and the stories became equally popular in that language. Bernardo Tasso, while on a mission to Spain about 1535, read the Amadis with delight and afterwards based upon it his poem of Amadigi di Francia (1560). He preferred the Amadis to all the French romances, not even excepting Lancelot. Living at that time, his evidence is ex-tremely valuable. He does not seem to have heard of Lobeira's version nor yet of the French and Portuguese pretensions. In his opinion the story was taken from some ancient British history. The romance was translated into German in 1569 and into Dutch in 1619. Graesse (Trésor, vii. p. 30) describes a Hebrew translation of the first four books by Jacob ben Moses Algabbai, printed at Constantinople by Eliezer ben Gerson Soncini, without date. The Amadis was first read in English through a version from the French by Anthony Munday (1592). Robert Southey's Amadis of Gaul (London, 1803, 4 vols. sm. 8vo) is an excellent translation, in which, however, there are constant signs of editorial pruning. "W. S. Rose put the romance into verse from De Herberay's French text (London, 1803, sm. 8vo). Besides the Amadigi of Tasso, the romance gave rise to Amadis, a drama by Gil Vicente (1521), the Portuguese Plautus, to an opera by Lulli, represented at the Académie Royale de Musique at Paris (1684), to a poem by Wieland (1771), the forerunner of his Oberon, and to another by Creuzé de Lesser (1813). The translation of De Herberay had an extra-ordinary success. It penetrated even to the convents. The Hugue-not La Noue and the Catholic Possevino protested against it in vain. The allusions to the Amadis and its continuations are end-less ; for instance,—"La gloire de Nicquée," used for the bracket seat of a coach ; the proverbial saying ' ' envoyer chez Guillot le songeur"; "Dariolette," the name for a confidant ; "Urgande la desconnue," a phrase with Scarron and La Fontaine ; and many more. The romance even furnished Christian names to some noble families, as to the lovely Corisande, countess of Guiche. The festal pageantries in vogue at the court of Charles V. were imitated from it. A poetical title of Queen Elizabeth was "the fair Oriana. " Burton refers to the reading of the romance in his Anatomy of MelancJioly (1621).

The period of Los Quatro Libros del Cavallero Amadis de Sketch Gaula is supposed to be earlier than that of Arthur or ofof tne Charlemagne. The hero is the illegitimate child of Perion, stolT-king of Gaul, and of Elisena, princess of Brittany, and is set adrift at sea in a cradle. He is picked up by a Scottish knight, who takes him to his own country ; he calls him the Child of the Sea and educates him at the king's court. Having been knighted, Amadis goes to the assistance of his father Perion (the relationship being then unknown), who in the meantime had married Elisena, by whom he had a lawfully begotten son, Galaor. The second child is stolen by a giant. Amadis becomes revealed to his parents through a ring, and consoles them in their new loss. He overthrows the king of Ireland, who had invaded Gaul, and returns to England. The adventures of the two brothers Amadis and Galaor in England, France, Germany, and the East occupy the remainder of the work, which is full of combats between them and other knights, magicians, and giants. While a youth at the Scottish court Amadis met Oriana, daughter of Lisuarte, king of England, who had been sent away from home in consequence of political troubles. The vicissitudes of their love form a marked feature of the tale. At one time the hero, disguised and under the name of Beltenebros, retires to a hermitage upon receiving a cruel letter from Oriana. After defeating a hundred knights by whom Lisuarte had been attacked, and some further exploits, Amadis has to leave Oriana and the English court owing to the jealous suspicions of the king. He returns to rescue the princess from the Romans, and afterwards carries on a long war with Lisuarte, who is. also attacked by a second enemy, Aravigo. In this per-plexity Lisuarte is generously assisted by Amadis, who slays Araxngo. Lisuarte then consents to the marriage of his daughter with Amadis on the Firm Island, whose wonders are brought to an end by Oriana entering a certain magic chamber,—a feat only to be accomplished hy the fairest and most faithful of women.

The Amadis is one of the best of the romances and contains many passages of much beauty and even tenderness. The boyish attachment between the Child of the Sea and Oriana is well told. The princess is weak and jealous, and not altogether a pleasing character. Amadis is a fine creation and is well distinguished from his brother Galaor. Both are brave, but the elder is grave and the younger gay. Amadis is the type of a constant lover; his brother is more changeful. A modern reader may be wearied by the intolerable length of the Amadis and by the continual recurrence of similar adventures all ending in the same way. But these repetitions seemed no fault to readers whose tastes were easily satisfied and to whom such fictions came as an entirely new source of delight.

The continuations are inferior to their prototype and become more full of complicated incidents and strange adventures as they proceed. The characters alter : for instance, the Urganda of the of the first four books is a fairy like Morgan la Fay, but subsequently she story. develops into an enchantress of a more Eastern and malignant nature like her rivals Zirfea and Melia. Besides his redaction of the Amadis, Montalvo composed about 1485 an original work, about one-third as long, giving the history of a son of the hero, called Esplandian. In order that it might share in the popularity of the father's achievements, it came forth as Quinto Libro d!Amadis de Gaida, o las Sergas del Cavallero Esplandiano. The curate justly decreed that "the merits of the father must not be imputed to the son" when he cast the volume on the bonfire in Don Quixote's courtyard. Although perhaps the best of the continuations, it is not equal to the original. We read that before marriage Oriana bore a child to Amadis, and in order to. hide her shame the boy is sent to a distant country. While those in charge of him are passing through a forest a lioness carries him off, but a hermit meets and rebukes the animal, which subsequently suckles the young Esplandian. When he grows up the lioness continues her care and accompanies him to the chase. King Lisuarte one day witnesses this, which is the cause of Oriana recognizing her son by certain marks on his body. He is brought up at the court of Lisuarte and receives knighthood. He then begins his adventures under the title of the Black Knight (from his armour), and sails for Turkey, where most of his exploits take place. The Christians are assisted by the enchantress Urganda and the infidels by her rival Melia. Amadis, Galaor, Esplandian, and the knights being in great danger of death, Urganda saves them by putting them all to sleep on the Firm Island until Lisuarte, son of Esplandian, could obtain possession of a certain magic sword. The romance was first printed in 1510, and five editions appeared before the end of the century. This was soon followed by other similar romances, each with an illegitimate descendant of Amadis for a hero, with a son who performs exploits still more wonderful than those of his father, —a perpetual succession of heroes. At the end of the Esplandian Montalvo speaks of writing another book to carry on the history still further. This caused some one, believed to be Paez de Ribera, to bring out El Sexto Libro, en que se cuentan los Grandes Hechos de Florisando, nephew of Amadis, taken from an Italian source. This was translated into English and Italian, tut not into French. The Septimo Libro, en el qual se trata de los Grandes Hechos en armas de Lisuarte de Greeia y Pcrion de Gaula, deals with the life of the son of Esplandian and Leonorina. The other character is Perion, son of Amadis and Oriana, and the type of the fickle lover, as opposed to Lisuarte, who is more like Amadis. The book com-mences with the voyage of Perion from England to Ireland, but a lady in a boat with a crew of four monkeys separates him from his followers. He goes to Trebizond and falls in love with Gricileria, daughter of the emperor. When Lisuarte is a prisoner in charge of the king of the Giants' Isle, Gradaffile, the daughter of the latter, escapes with him to Constantinople, where after many combats he obtains the magic sword and enables Amadis and the knights to escape from the magic sleep in the Firm Island (see Esplandian above). Lisuarte eventually marries Onoloria, sister of Gricileria. The work continues Fiorisand and is attributed to Feliciano de Silva. Juan Diaz, the author of El Octavo Libro, que trata de Lisuarte de Grecia y de la Muerte del Bey Amadis, pretended that his work was taken from the Greek. It also is a continuation of Fiorisand and was not translated.

We now come to Libro Noveno, que es la Chronica del Principe y Cavallero de la Ardiente Espada, Amadis de Grecia, a continuation of the seventh and not of the eighth book, and more full of marvels than any of its predecessors. Amadis of Greece, the son of Lisu-arte and Onoloria, is carried off by pirates when an infant and sold to a Moorish king. He derived his name from the figure of a flam-ing sword upon his breast. The exploits commence, like those in the Esplandian, at the Forbidden Mountain, and the family history concludes, as in the same romance, with the enchantment by Zirfea of all the heroes and princesses in the Tower of the Universe in order to prevent their death at a fated moment. Feliciano de Silva is the reputed author. Stimulated by the success of his two anonymous productions, the same writer continued the series with four more parts, of which the Coronica de los Valientes Caballeros D. Florisel de Niquea y el Fuerte Anaxartes forms the tenth book and contains the first two parts. Genealogically the romance is a con-tinuation of Lisuarte and Amadis de Grecia. Florisel is the son of the latter person and the princess of Niquea. In these fictions a new character is introduced, Darinel, a kind of comic shepherd, in love with the heroine Sylvia, daughter of Lisuarte and Onoloria, through whom Florisel becomes acquainted with the heroine. All three go to the relief of Anastarax, who is confined by enchantment in a fiery prison. But the achievement of the exploit is reserved for the Amazon Alastraxerea, whose adventures occupy a great portion of the tale, which culminates in the siege of Constantinople by all the potentates of western Europe in consequence of Florisel having carried off Helena princess of Apollonia. Among other new characters are the enchantress Armida and the "strong" Anaxartes, who marries young Oriana, sister of Florisel. The amount of bloodshed throughout the work is only equalled by the number of marriages. The third part of Florisel forms the eleventh book of Amadis and is known as Chronica de Bon Florisel de Niquea, en la qual se trata de D. Iiogel de Greeia y el Segundo Agesilao. Rogel is the son of Florisel and Helena, and brother of Agesilao the Second, so called to distinguish him from Agesilao of Colchos. A few years later Feliciano de Silva published the fourth part of Don Florisel, in two books, the second of which treats of the loves of Rogel of Greece and Archisidea, and of Agesilao and Diana, daughter of Queen Sidonia. The author in his preface implies that the work was intended as an allegorical celebration of the military and domestic virtues of Charles V.

The hero of La Dozena Parte que tracta de los grandes Hechos en Armas del Cav. Don Silves de la Selva, was the son of Amadis of Greece and Finistea. Born on a desert island, Don Silvio first dis-tinguishes himself at the siege of Constantinople described in the tenth book. The Greek empresses and princesses having been carried off by enchantment, he accompanies the knights who go in search of them. The ladies are rescued, but during their absence have become mothers, among others of Spheramond, son of Rogel, and Amadis of Astre, son of Agesilao. Feliciano de Silva some-times passes for the author, who was really Pedro de Lujan. The work is in two parts, which in French make the thirteenth and fourteenth books. Lepolemo 6 el Caballero de la Cruz and Leandro el Bel are considered to make the thirteenth and fourteenth books. From a unique first edition (1521) of Lepolemo discovered a few years since it appears that it professed to be a translation by Alonso de Salazar. The hero was the son of the emperor Maximilian and was carried away in infancy to the East. N. Antonio speaks of a certain romance composed by a Portuguese, entitled Penalva, the last of the line of the original Amadis. It is supposed to have dealt with the last exploits and death of Lisuarte of Greece, but if it existed at all no printed copy has ever yet been seen. The other Spanish romances usually appended to the Amadis series are mentioned in the bibliographical list below.

In the French series more and more liberties are taken with the The original as the work proceeds. As shown in the table below, the French numbers of the books do not tally. The fifteenth, entirely due to series of Antoine Tyron, describes the feats of Sferamond (so called from continu-a birthmark representing a globe) of Greece and Amadis d'Astre. ations. The sixteenth to the twenty-first books continue the adventures of Sferamond and were translated from the Italian of Mambrino Roseo by Gabriel Chappuys. Duplicate versions from the Italian were made by Nicolas de Montreux of the sixteenth, by .iacques Chariot of the nineteenth, and by Jean Bovion of the twentieth books. The twenty-second to the twenty-fourth books, devoted to Fulgoran, Safiraman, and Hercules d'Astre, continue and form a new conclusion of the French Amadis. Only one edition appeared (Paris, 1615, 3 vols. 8vo), now extremely rare. The naive and pure style of the earliest of the series degenerates into an uninteresting succession of coarse and obscene incidents. In the twenty-third book we are taken for the first time to America. Mores de Grece (1552) is con-sidered to form the twenty-fifth book. Genealogically it would be the sixth, as the hero is the second son of Esplandian. In the 16th century the French Amadis library extended to 30 vols, of various sizes. In the 17th century appeared a new work forming, as it were, the preliminary, being the history of the Chevalier clu Soleil and his Brother Bosiclair, sons of the emperor Trebatius (Paris, 1620-25, 8 vols.),—not identical with the Spanish Febo. Belianis de Grece (1625) forms one vol., and the Roman des Bomans (1626-29) —containing the end of the career of the Knight of the Sun, all the Amadises, Flores, and Belianis—forms 8 vols., and finishes this long series of about 50 vols. The Thresor de tons les Livres d'Amadis (1559-60, frequently reprinted) is a selection of the speeches, letters, cartels, complaints, &c. ; it was translated into English as The Treasury of Amadis of France (H. Bynneman, n.d.; about 1575).

The Italian translation, which is extremely difficult to obtain complete, conforms more closely to the Spanish. The Sferamundi romances were first composed in that language by Mambrino Roseo. A perfect set of the German version is also very rare. Some of these volumes were translated by a Protestant, who made changes to suit his religious views, such as altering "mass" to "sermon."
Amadis of Gaul, m. Oriana.
Galaor, m. Briolania.
Melicia, m. Bruneo de Bonamar.
Pedigree of the Amadis Heroes. Perion, king of Gaul, m. Elisena.
Florestan, m. Sardainira. I
Florisand.
I !
Lisuarte of Greece, m. Onoloria.
Flores of Brisena, Esplandian, Perion Perion. Talan- Gar-
Greece or m. enip. m. Leon- of Gaul, que. inter.
Florisand. of Rome. orina. m. Gricileria.
Flores of Greece IL, Knight of the Swan.
Sylvia, Amadis of Greece,—
. Anaxartes. m, princess of Niquea.
Alastraxerea.
Florisel de Niquea, m. Helena.
Silvio de la Selva, son of Amadis and Finistea.
Rogel of Greece, m. Archisidea.
Anaxartes, m. Oriana.
Felix Marte of Greece.
Spheramond.
Agesilao the Second, in. Diana.
Amadis of Astre.
i i
Oriana, Leonora. Di. Amadis.
Lisuarte, m. Brisena.
i
Norandel, m. Menoressa.
French.
English.
Bibliographical List of first Editions of Amadis Romances.
(1546) ....
(Mambrino Roseo,1550) (1550) ....
(Do.)
(A. Munday, 1592)
(J. Johnson, 1664)
(F. Kirkman. ¡652) (1693)
Not trans.
Amadis (Montalvo, 1508) .
Esplandian (Montalvo, 1510)
Florisando (Paez de Ritiera, 1510)
Lisuarte de Grecia y Perion
de Gaula (Feliciano de
Silva, 1514) Lisuarte de Grecia y Muerte
dé Amadis (Juan LMaz,
1526)
Amadis de Grecia (Feliciano
de Silva, 1535) Florisel de Niquea, pts. 1-2
(Fel. de Silva, 1532) Rogel de Grecia, pt. 3 of
Florisel (1536)
Silvio de la Selva (1546)
Lepolemo ó el Caballero de la Cruz (1521)
(Herberay, 1540)
(Do., 1541)
Not translated.. (Herberay, 1546)
Not translated..
(Herberay, 1546-48)
(G. Boileau,1552; J. Gohorry, 1555) (J.Gohorry,1554:
G. Aubert, 1556) (Do., 1571; A.
Tyron, 1576) Mcliadus, ditle..
Chev. de la Croix
(1534)
Not translated.. Sferamondi et Amadis d'Astre pt. 1 (A. Tyron, 1577)
Sferamondi, pts. 2-6 (G. Chap-puys, 157S-S2)
Chev. du Soleil (1620)
(1550) (1551) (1551) (1561)
Car. della
Croce (P.
Loro,15S0) Not trans. Sferamundi
pts. 1-6
(1558)
Leandro el Bel (1563)
Esferamundi de Grecia ..
(1557)
(1585)
Febo y Rosicler, 4 pts. (Or-tuñez de Calahorra and others, 1562-89)
Belianis de Grecia (J. Fernandez, 1547)
(1586)
(1598)
(1625)
Fulgorati (1615) Flores de Grèce (Herberay, 1552) Roman des Romans (1626-29)
anish.

Although the Palmerins have not enjoyed the celebrity Palmerin of the line of Amadis, they were nevertheless closely allied de Oliva. in dignity and importance, and their histories are written in evident imitation of their distinguished original. At the head of this second great family of Spanish romances stands El libro del Cauallero Palmerin de Oliva. From some Latin verses at the end it appears to have been written by a woman, said to have been a carpenter's daughter of Burgos, or a lady of Puente del Arzobispo (Augustobriga), at the beginning of the 16th century. Only one copy is known of the editio princeps of Sakmanca (1511). The love-scenes are described with more volup-tuous detail than is usually to be expected in a female author. But this warmth of colouring may have been one of the causes of the success of the romance. There are many Spanish and Portuguese editions, and it was first translated into French by Jean de Voyer, vicomte de Paulmy, in 1546, into Italian by Mambrino Roseo in 1544, into English by Anthony Munday in 1588, and into Flemish in 1602.

Like most of his compeers, Palmerin was not born in wedlock. He was the son of Griana, daughter of Reymicio, emperor of Byzantium, and of Florendos of Macedon. The infant was exposed on a hill covered with palm trees and olives (whence the name) and was discovered by a peasant, who reared him as his own son. Palmerin's earliest exploit is to save a travelling merchant from a lioness. The grate-ful traveller furnishes him with arms and a horse, and Palmerin sets forth in quest of adventures, the first of which is to kill a serpent that guards a fountain whose waters are necessary to Primaleon, king of Macedon. He then succours the emperor of Germany, with whose daughter, Polinarda, he falls in love. Like the lady in Arthus de Bretaigne, she had previously appeared to him in a dream. Norway, England, and Greece are success-ively the scene of his daring. He delivers from the power of the Grand Turk the princess Agriola, who ulti-mately marries Trineus, the companion of Palmerin. After many combats, enchantments, and love escapades, the hero at length marries Polinarda and becomes emperor of By-zantium upon the death of Reymicio.

The same fair unknown also produced Libro Segundo que trata Continued los Hechos en Armas de Primaleon y Polendos, both of them ations. sons of Palmerin by different mothers, the first by Polinarda and the second by the queen of Tharsus. While with his mother Polendos one day ill treats an old woman, who mutters that it was not thus that his father treated the helpless. This sets him to look for his sire. He meets with Primaleon and goes to the court of Duardos (Edward) of England. The beautiful Gridonia, daughter of Duke Hormedes, bears two sons to Primaleon, the second of whom is made the hero of the next romance, or third book, Historia del Cav. Don Polindo (Polendo is the fourth part of the Italian series). The fourth book is La Cronica del Cav. Platir, the son of Primaleon and Gridonia, and very properly condemned by the barber. The fifth book consists of Historia del Cavallier Flortir, which is only to be found in Italian.

The sixth book, Libro del Cav. Palmerin de Inglaterra, was the most serious rival to the popularity of Amadis. Formerly this work was considered to have been first written in Portuguese and was attributed to Francisco Moraes, from the first edition then known in that language, printed at Evora in 1567. The state-ment of Moraes, now proved to bo true, that it was translated from the French (1552), was looked upon merely as a literary device. On the discovery of the original edition in Spanish (Toledo, 1547-48) it was seen that the real author was Luis Hurtado, a Toledo poet. It was translated into French by Jacques Vincent in 1552, and into Italian by Mambrino Roseo in 1554-55. The first Portu-guese version was republished at Lisbon in 1786 (3 vols. 4to) under the name of Moraes, and from this Southey edited his revision of Munday's translation (London, 1807, 4 vols. sm. 8vo). Palmerin and Florian are the twin children of Flerida (daughter of Palmerin de Oliva) and Duardos, king of England. The mother gives birth to them in a forest and they are taken away by a savage as food for his two lions. Duardos is in the power of an amiable giant, Dramuziando, and Primaleon with a company of knights starts from Constantinople to England in order to relieve him. In the meantime the children are being tended by the wife of the savage and reared with her sen Selvian. Florian falls into the hands of Sir Pridos, son of the duke of Wales, who educates him under the name of the Child of the Desert. Palmerin, his twin brother, meets with Polendos, who takes him and Selvian to Constantinople. Palmerin's first love-affair is with Polinarda, who repulses his affec-tion, and he travels to England under the title of the Knight of Fortune. In the middle of a battle with Florian the brothers are separated by Flerida and the secret of their birth divulged by Daliarte, a magician. Their subsequent adventures are beyond enumeration, those of the Perilous Isle being the most interesting. A part of the story relates to the castle of Almourol, where resides the proud Miraguarda, whose peerless beauty is championed by enamoured knights. The giant Dramuziando becomes one of her admirers. In this romance the marriages take place in the middle, giving ample opportunity for many more combats, abductions, ravishments, murders, and other deeds of violence or valour. This is evidently so close an imitation of the Amadis, while only second to it in popularity and intrinsic merit, that a comparison between the two naturally arises. As in its prototype, there are two heroes. We have Palmerin, the faithful lover, and Florian, the fickle one, as well as Daliarte, the magician, and the Perilous Isle. The characters are well discriminated : Palmerin is generous, brave, and chivalrous ; Florian, witty and courageous. The giant Dramuziando actually excites our sympathy and interest, and the emperor Primaleon is a fine and courtly old gentleman. Much feeling for the beauties of nature is shown ; the dialogue is good. On the other hand, the story is not so simple and natural as the original Amadis. There are too many knights and battles, and the romance is distinctly inferior as a work of art.

The seventh book consists of Terceira [e Quarto] Parte de Pal-mcirim de Inglaterra onde se contam os Feitos do Don Duardos Segundo seu Filho, which continues the Portuguese version of Moraes, to which the two parts are the third and fourth books. It was composed by Diogo Fernandez de Lisboa. The eighth and last book of the Palmerin series are the fifth and sixth parts of the same work, being Chronica do Famoso Princepe Don Clarisol de Bretanha, by Balth. Goncalvez Lobato. Like the preceding, it was written in Portuguese and not translated.

Florendos, m. Griana.
Pedigree of the Palmerin Heroes. Primaleon.
!
Francelina, m. Polendos, king of Thessaly.
Palmerin de Oliva, m. Polinarda.
Arismena, m. king of Sparta.
I
Vasilla.
Primaleon, Polendos, king of Thessaly
in. Gridonia. (son of Palmerin and
the queen of Tharsus).
Annida, m. Frísol, king of Plungary.
I
I I I
Piatir, Polinarda. Franciano. Clarisea.
m. Si delà. |
Polendos.
Flerida.
Frederic, king of England, m. daughter of Meliadus.
Don Duardos (Edward), m. Flerida.

Florendos.
i i i i
Primaleon. Gridonia. Palmerin Flortir.
of Lacedemonia.
Florian.
Palmerin of
England, TO. Polinarda.
II
Don Duardos II. II
Don Carisol.
Spanish.
Bk
Italian.
French.
Bibliographical List of first Editions of Palmerin Emanées
Palmerin de Oliva (1511) .
(1546) .
(A. Munday, 1588)
(Do., 1595)
Primaleon (1512) .
Polindo (1520) ...
Piatir (1533)
(1550)
Not in French.
Do
Flortir (no Spanish edition)
Do.
(Mambrino Roseo,1544) (1548) Platirilbiii) Polendo (1566) Palmerino d'Inghilterra (1554 55)
Flortir (1554)
Not trans.
(P.ofEngland. A. Munday,
I
1602)
(1552) .
Not translated.
Not trans.
Palmerin de Inglaterra (1547; in Portuguese, 1567)
Don Duardos II.de Bretanha (Portug. by Diogo Fernandez de Lisboa, 1587)
Don Clarisol de Bretanha (B. Goncalvez Lobato, 1602)
Do.
Do.
Do.
English.
(d) Teutonic, Anglo-Danish, &c.

Outside the four great cycles of mediaeval romance there lie some minor cycles, as well as various isolated fictions, to which we must now make reference.

The origins of the Teutonic cycle belong to epic or Teutonic ballad literature, as we find them in the Wilkinasaga, in the Nibelungenlied, and the Heldenbuch. As those works have already been treated separately or in connexion with the national literature to which they belong, we need only make brief allusion to the fact that the Germanic legend of Siegfried (Sigurd, Siegmund, Sigenot) is very ancient, and that the Norse or Icelandic sagas embody its oldest existing form. The High German Nibelungenlied, Hilde-brandslied, Hadubrand, Dietrichssaga (or Heldenbuch), K'onig Bother, &c, are probably specifically older than the Norse books, but they contain the legend in a later shape,—_ the Heldenbuch especially deviating from the first two by the introduction of a number of names and incidents arbitrarily adapted from the history of the Gothic, Lom-bard, Burgundian, and Hunnic wars during the 5th and 6th centuries. There are no prose romances on these themes, but the mythical hero Siegfried, called Horn-Siegfried or Hôrnen-Siegfried, gave his name to the French and English stories of Horn and Rimenhild (Rimenhild being derived from Chrimhild, the wife of Siegfried). Before these last came into existence there had arisen in England a set of legends of which Anlaf Sitricson, the Danish king of Dublin (converted to Christianity 943, deceased on a pilgrimage in 981), was the hero. They were combined in a French poem called Havelol; by Geoffrey Gaimar (12th century), the name Havelok being a corruption of Anlaf or Olaf, and reappearing still later in the form of Hamlet. Various trouvères composed ballads of greater length on the same theme, with many additions, and finally others appeared in English. In all of them we find mixed elements, includ-ing incidents which connect this Dano- Saxon romance with Guy of Warwick and the French King Horn.

The fact last n?erationed tends to justify the assumption Anglo-of an AngLo-Danish cycle, which may be said to begin with Danish, the poem of Beowulf. Between the mythical Siegfried and Beowulf of the early centuries and the fictitious Horn and Guy of the 13th the Anglo-Danish Havelok of the 12th intervened, and furnished material to the trouvères who composed the last two works. In Horn and Rimen-hild there is little more than the names to connect the story with the old Siegfried poem, but much that brings it into contact with Anlaf and Danish or Norse history. Its reappearance in prose as Pontus et Sidoine belongs to the second half of the 15th century. Guy of Warwick, from whatever actual personage its hero may have been derived, is a purely English story of the 13th century, connected with Havelok by its evident relation to legends of Danish wars in England, and with King Horn by its embodiment of the most striking incidents of that story,— namely, the return of Guy as a disguised palmer to his own castle, and the use of a ring by which he discloses himself to his wife.

Havelok the Dane appeared first in a French poem by Geoffrey Havelok Gaimar (12th century), and was inserted by him between his Brut theDane. or translation of Geoffrey of Monmouth (now lost) and his Estorie des Engles. The story runs that Adelbrict, a Dane, is king of Norfolk, while Edelsi is king in Lindsey. The former marries a sister of the latter, and both die ; a girl, Argentille, remains, who is given by her uncle, out of spite, in marriage to a scullion-jongleur, Cuheran. She dreams that her new husband is of superior origin ; he confesses that he comes from Grimsby. They both start for this place and discover that Cuheran's putative father, Grim, is dead. It turns out that Cuheran is the son of Gunter, an exiled king of Denmark, and that his real name is Havelok. He and Argentille set out for Denmark, where Edulf, the brother of the usurper, has become king. Sigar, formerly seneschal to Gunter, is lord of the town where Havelok lands and assists him when Argentille is attacked by miscreants. Havelok is made known by his power to sound Gunter's horn and is saluted as king. He returns to England, fights with Edelsi, and gains the day through Argentine's device of setting up the dead warriors on stakes. When Edelsi dies Have-lok and Argentille reign in Lindsey as well as in Norfolk. The tale may have filtered through Welsh channels, as it seems to have gathered British elements before it was taken up by the Anglo-Danes. Argentille (or Argantel) appears to be formed from a Welsh name, which the early English writers converted to Goldborough. The French chanson belongs to the early part of the 12th century. It has no direct prose representative. Gaimar's text was first edited by Madden (Roxburghe Club, 1828), in the Monurnenta Hist. Brit. (1848), and by T. Wright (Caxton Soc, 1850). A French lai on the same subject is included in the Roxburghe and in the Caxton volumes ; it was issued separately by Francisque Michel in 1833. An English poem is also to be found in the Roxburghe volume, and was likewise edited by W. W. Skeat (Early Eng. Text Soc. 1868). Guy of Guy of Warwick is dealt with in vol. xi. p. 341. Besides the Warwick, many editions of the prose romance, there is an unpublished Heraud d'Ardennes, sometimes known under the name of its other hero Rembrun, the son of Guy of Warwick, who is found in English metrical versions.
King King Horn. —The primitive English form of the poem is lost, but Horn. is represented in the existing chanson de geste (Horn et Bimenhild, 12th century). An early version supplied some of the incidents for Richard of Ely's Gesta Herewardi Saxonis (first half of 12th century), which claims to be partly derived from an old book written by Leofric, Hereward's chaplain at Bourne. English MSS. (in verse) are preserved at the British Museum, Oxford, and Cambridge. Allof, king of Sudenne, is killed by Saracen (Danish) pirates, who also drive away his wife Godylt and turn their son Horn adrift at sea, with Athulf, Fykenild, and ten other children. They land at AVestness (Cornwall) and the children are reared by King Aylmer. Horn is banished for a love passage with the king's daughter, Rymenild, and sails for Ireland under the name of God-mod. He returns with Irish warriors and by himself joins a feast held to celebrate the espousals of Rymenild with a King Mody. Horn, disguised as a pilgrim, drops a ring into Rymenild's cup with the words "Drink to Horn of horn." He defeats Mody and reinstates his mother in Sudenne. Rymenild is carried off by Fykenild, who is ultimately killed by the hero, by whom the lady is rescued. The only copy known of the knightly romance of Horn Childe and Maiden Rimnild is the Auchinleck MS. The story was very popular in Scotland. Horn and. Horn Childe have both been printed by Ritson (Ancient Eng. Metr. Rom., 1802, ii., iii.). Francisque Michel has edited Horn et Bimenhild, including the English and Scottish poems (Bannatyne Club, 1845). The Cambridge MS. was edited by J. R. Lumby for the Early Eng. Text Soc. (1866) and by E. Matzner in Altenglische Sprochproben (1867), and the Oxford text by C. Horstmann in Herrig's Achiv (1872).

Ponthus Ponihus et la Belle Sidoine. —In this prose romance the soldan of et Babylon sends his three sons to seek their fortune at sea. One of Sidoine. them, Broadas, occupies Galicia and kills King Thibor, whose young son Pontus with the other children is sent off in a boat to France. They are wrecked off the coast of Brittany, and the story proceeds very much as in the poem of Horn. Nearly all the names are changed, however, and there are additional knightly episodes. The romance was first printed at Lyons about 1480. A German translation appeared at Augsburg in 1483, and an English version was printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1511.

The Anglo-Danish cycle of romance, by reason of its origin and type of adventures, may be fitly supplemented by the stories, eminently English in character, although furnished with an Anglo-Norman setting, which have been called "outlaw romances." Outlaw Tales of outlaws form a considerable portion of English ro" fiction, and, as elsewhere, the same incidents occur over and mances. over again> "bejng always attributed to the favourite hero of the day. The oldest was that of Hereward the Saxon, whose exploits against William were renowned in prose and verse soon after his own time. Most of the outlaw stories remain in ballad form; a prose example is the French Fulk Fitzwarin (about 1320), descriptive of outlaw life in the Welsh marches and other parts of England, Spain, <fec,—an embellished record of actual events from 1201 to 1203. We learn that Payn Peverel, having over-come a devil that tenanted the body of a Cornish giant, Geomagog, who haunts a ruined British village in Shrop-shire, builds a castle near the place with the assistance of his kinsfolk. A certain Melette Peverel marries Warin de Meez. and their son Fulk Fitzwarin is himself the father of five sons, who go through scenes many of which are 1 obviously suggested by the Charlemagne chansons, such as the fatal chess-board quarrel, the taunting of Ogier by Boland, <fcc. The five brothers are outlawed and seek adventures. One of their followers, John de Rampayne, resembles Friar Tuck in his skill in playing, singing, and the use of the quarterstaff. The story ends with the sub-mission and pardon of Fulk, the eldest of the brothers, the death of his wife Mahaud, his marriage with Clarice de Auberville, and his subsequent blindness,—all real his-torical events. It was the first wife of Fulk who became a personage as Maid Marian in the Robin Hood stories and in the plays of Munday and Chettle. The romance was first published by Francisque Michel in 1840, by T. Wright in 1855 (Warton Club), and at the end of Ralph de Coggeshall (Rolls Series, 1875).

The exploits of the earlier outlaws, Hereward and Fulk Robin Fitzwarin, reappear under the name of ROBIN HOOD (q.v.). Hood. The extensive ballad literature relating to the last and his companions Maid Marian, Friar Tuck, Little John, &c, needs only a passing reference. The Life of Robin Hood, a prose rendering of the Geste of Robyn Hode (Wynkyn de Worde, c. 1495), is reproduced by W. J. Thorns in his Early Eng. Prose Romances, 1858.

One of the most popular stories connected with the Robin Hood cycle is Gamclyn (c. 1340), sometimes inserted among Chaucer's Canterbury Talcs. Here three sons are left equal shares in their father's property, —Gamelyn, the youngest, being under the charge of the eldest, John, who neglects him. At the age of sixteen he gains a ram at a wrestling match and invites the spectators home. After the guests retire John and Gamelyn quarrel. The latter is imprisoned, but released by Adam the Spencer, an old servant, and the two escape together. Gamelyn is made king of the outlaws and John becomes sheriff. Gamelyn is captured, but is bailed out by his other brother, Ote. Finally, John is hanged by Gamelyn. The tale was used by T. Lodge for Rosalynde (1590) and dramatized by Shakespeare in As You Like It (ed. W. W. Skeat, 1884).

(e) Unaffiliated Romances.

The works of this class are of less importance than those which belong to the great cycles; for, indeed, there are few which have not been drawn somehow into one or other of these last. Amongst the most striking we have Pierre de Provence et la Belle Maguelonne, a story of love, adventure, and magic, which existed in Provencal verse at the end of the 12th century, but was first compiled in French prose in 1457 (the text being printed at Lyons about 1478). It was very popular in Spain, and a Spanish translation appeared as a quarto volume at Toledo in 1526.—A similar romance is Paris et Vienne, belonging apparently to the first half of the 15th century; the first edition was printed at Antwerp, by Gerard Leeuw, in 1487, five years after the appearance of an Italian translation (Treviso, 1482), and two years after Caxton had issued an English version (Westminster, 1485).—Another French romance (better corresponding to the modern use of the word) is Jean de Paris (Paris, c. 1535), written by Pierre de la Sippade (1490-1500). It is a pleasant fiction, full of disguises and surprises like the works of G. P. R. James, and may be compared with Le petit Jehan de Saintre (Paris, 1517), written by Antoine de la Sale about 1470, in which we find a true picture of the manners of the French court in the first half of the 15th century.—The Trois Filz de Roys is a heavy and dull romance written in Flanders late in the 15th century.—A work of far superior order is Tirant lo Blanch, written in the Valencian language in the 15th century by Joannot Martorell. This was printed, with the fourth book added after the author's death, at Valencia in 1490, and has the honour of being the first romance which came from the Spanish press. The author professes to derive his stories from English sources, but he seems to be indebted only to Guy of Warwick for some of his situations and the names of the English localities in which his scenes are laid. Three other Spanish ro-mances may be mentioned here. Though the earliest printed edition of Oliveros y Artus is in French, the work (printed in Spanish at Burgos in 1499) is undoubtedly of Spanish origin. It has been popular in all languages. An English version came from the press of Wynkyn de Wörde in 1518. Felix Marte de Hyrcania (Valladolid, 1556), by Melchor Ortega, is chiefly remarkable as having been read by Dr Samuel Johnson, who is likely to have been the only person since the 16th century capable of such a feat. The Guerras de Granada (1595-1619) of Perez de Hita con-tains some of the finest ballads in the language, and is an interesting and well-written fiction. The first (and best) part deals with the reign of the last Moorish king of Granada, and the second part relates the final ruin of the Moors in Philip HP's reign.—Another favourite fiction in many lands is that in which a chaste wife is wrongfully accused of infidelity and punished. The character even appears among the earliest ballads of the Charlemagne cycle (La reine Sibelle); but here we have to mention three distinct narratives which have attracted generations of readers, and which are widely known from their adop-tion by many writers. These are Patient Grizel (Griseldis), Genevieve of Brabant, and La belle Helene. The story in each is similar, and the plot or some of the incidents may be traced in the Lai del Fresne of Marie de France (c. 1220), in the Latin legendary history of St Genevieve (written about 1272), in several old monkish lives of St Helena of Constantinople, in the late romances of Valentine and Orson, Florent et Lyon, and other stories,—the heroine being variously described as the Chaste Empress, the Chaste Queen, or the Chaste Duchess. The most celebrated of these stories is that of Griseldis. She is said to have been the wife of Walter, marquis of Saluces or Saluzzo, in the 11th century, and her misfortunes were considered to belong to actual history when they were handled by Boc-caccio and Petrarch, although the probability is that Boc-caccio borrowed his narrative from a Provencal fabliau. He included it in the recitations of the tenth day (Deca-merone), and must have written it about 1350. Petrarch Latinized it in 1373, and his translation formed the basis of much of the later literature. These works, however, really belong to a different class from that treated here, and may be referred to popular tales, like the narratives which have been repeated in many forms and in many lands from the time of Bidpai downwards. The prose French romance, La Patience de Griselidis (Brehan-Loudeac, 1484), was derived from Petrarch, as also Chaucer's nar-rative in the Canterbury Tales, and the Elizabethan drama in which Dekker was a collaborateur.—The De Duobus Amantibus (or Eurialus and Lucretia) of iEneas Sylvius is usually included amongst romances, but it is rather an historical novel based upon the imperial court gossip of his own day.—The Spanish Carcel de Amor, composed about 1480-90 by Diego de San Pedro, is also a novel; the famous or infamous Celestina is a drama of surpassing vigour and interest; and the pastoral romances of Diana, Pastor Fido, and Arcadia belong to a different class from that of mediasval romance.—As much may be said of the English romances produced in the 16th and the earlier part of the 17th century, which are chiefly weak novelistic imitations of the later adjuncts to Amadis and Palmerin.— The Seven Champions of Christendom is a popular tale.—_ The Romance of the Fox (Reynard the Fox) and the Roman de la Rose likewise belong to totally distinct orders of literature, the former to that of tales (Volksbücher) and the latter to the large class of allegorical poems.—The Norman stories of Robert the Devil and Robert of Sicily are also popular tales.

III. MODERN ROMANCE TO THE 17TH CENTURY.

The inspiration of mediaeval romance is gone ; but it is necessary briefly to trace its final reflexions to the close of the 17th century, when prose fiction began to assume more definitely the character of the modern novel.

We have seen how large a place in the history of France, romances is occupied by France down to the end of the 16th century. We first meet with the so-called "pastoral romance" in French in L'Astrêe (1612) of Honoré d'Urfé, an enormous work inspired by Montemayor, which, however, La Rochefoucauld found interesting. It was fre-quently reprinted and had many continuations and imita-tions. Camus de Pontcarré wrote in opposition religious pastorals such as Palombe. To the same class belong Floris et Cléonthe (1613) by Moulinet du Parc, Les Bergeries de Vesper (1618) by G. Coste, Chrysérionte de Gaule (1620) by De Sonan, Le Courtisan Solitaire (1622) by J. Lourdelot, Le Mêlante (1624) by L. Videl, L'Fndimion (1624) by J. Ogier de Gombauld, Cléomèdes et Sophonisbe (1627) by De Gerzan, Le Berger Extravagant (1627) by Ch. Sorel, Anax-andre et Orazie (1629) by Boisrobert, Ariane (1632) and Roxane (1639) by J. Des Marets. Le Roy de Gomberville led the way to the new school of French romance in Polexandre (1632-39) and La Cythérêe (1640-42), which were the models for the still more ponderous productions of La Calprenède and De Scudéry. La jeune Alcidiane (1651), an unfinished continuation of Polexandre, was com-pleted by Mademoiselle M. A. Gomez. These form a link between the genuine romance of chivalry and the so-called heroic style. We still meet with giants and extravagant exploits. The adventures with pirates and the sea scenes show the influence of translations of Greek novels. Made-leine de Scudéry produced her romances under the name of her eccentric brother Georges, but the authorship was well known. The first to appear was Ibrahim, ou l'Illustre Bassa (1641); then the work for which she is best known, Artamène, ou le Grand Cyrus (10 vols., 1649-53); Clêlie, histoire romaine (10 vols., 1650-53), contains the famous "carte du pays de Tendre"; then came Almahide, ou l'Esclave Reyne (1660), Les Femmes Illustres (1665), and La Promenade de Versailles (1669). One of the causes of her great popularity was her representation of living characters under flimsy disguise. Keys to Le Grand Cyrus have been published. Gauthier de Costes, chevalier de la Calprenède, wrote Cassandre (1642-50); Clêopâtre (12 vols., 1647-58), the best of his works, which contains the character of Juba satirized by Boileau ; Faramond (12 vols., 1661-70), continued by Pierre Dortigue de Vau-morière; and Les Nouvelles (1661). In spite of their appalling length and their tedious conversations and de-scriptions, La Calprenède's romances are not without merit. The author has imagination, and his heroes have a share of the noble sentiments of their predecessors. Berenice (1648) by J. R. de Segrais, La Précieuse (1656-58) by Mich, de Pure, Histoire du Temps (1654) and Marcarise (1664), both by Hédelin, and the mystical romances of the Jesuit Ceriziers, belong to the same school. Nearly all the familiar machinery of the old romances is now absent : we no longer meet with dragons, necromancers, giants, and enchanted castles. Formerly love was secondary to heroic achievement ; now it becomes the ruling passion, and knightly deeds are performed only to excite the applaud-ing smile of a mistress and not for the sake of military glory. The jargon of gallantry used in these fictions exercised an evil influence upon contemporary literature, until it was laughed out of existence by the Précieuses Ridicules of Molière and the dialogue of Boileau on Les Héros de Roman. Such works as Marie Stuart (1675) by P. Ls Pesant de Boisguilbert, Nouvelles d'Elisabeth (1680), and Frédéric de Sicile (1680) are a connecting link between the romance of De Scudéry and the modern his-torical novel.

England. After the invention of printing England produced few original contributions to the literature of chivalric romance. There was a large number of translations of the old French works, and, in addition to these, a rich store of romantic ballads, which formed the customary literature of the people. The yeoman and the outlaw-had succeeded the steel-clad knight in public favour. Robin Hood and his merry men appealed to a wider range of sympathies than did Arthur and his companions, and such tales as the Exploits of Robin Hood, Tom a Lincoln, George a Green the Finder of Wakefield, and Thomas of Reading retained their vogue in abbreviated shape as chapbooks down to the end of the 18th century. The stage monopolized the chief forces of imaginative narration during the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, and the next specimen of a native romance is to be found in the Euphues (1579-80) of John Lyly, who drew largely from Spanish sources. Euphuism gave rise to the Philo-timus (1583) of Brian Melbanck, to Lodge's Rosalynde (1590), to Greene's Dorastus and Fawnia (1588), which was the foundation of Shakespeare's Winter's Tale, and to Philomela (1592) by the same writer. Sir Philip Sidney's The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, which appeared in 1590, after the author's death, is the most brilliant prose fiction in English of the century, and a genuine pastoral and heroic romance. We should not forget Parismus, Prince of Bohemia (1598), based upon Palmerin de Oliva, and Ornatus and Artesia (1607), both by Emanuel Ford ; Pheander, a Maiden Knight (1595), by Henry Roberts; and The Miseries of Malvillia (1606), by Breton. Such compilations as Painter's Palace of Pleasure (1566), Whet-stone's Heptameron (1582), Westward for Smelts (1620), and Goulart's Admirable Histories (1607) are composed of translations or imitations of Italian and French tales. Boccaccio, Giraldi Cinthio, Apuleius, Heliodorus, and Montemayor appeared in English in the latter half of the 16 th century, and to the laborious Munday we owe ver-sions of Amadis (1592) and Palmerin of England (1602) through the French. In the 17th century La Calprenède, Scudéry, Gombauld, and other romancists were translated, and Mrs. Behn, Lee, Lord Orrery, Settle, Banks, and Dryden adapted their works for the stage. Barclay's Argenis, a politico-heroic romance with characters representative of real and historical personages, first came out in Latin in 1622; Bishop Hall's Mundus alter et idem (1607) is an imitation of Rabelais. Eliana (1661) is a caricature of all the absurdities of the contemporary French school. The last of the English romances is the Parthenissa (1665) of Roger Boyle, earl of Orrery, which, although prolix and incongruous, has literary merit and a certain narrative interest.

Other The last of the Spanish romances is Policisnc etc Boccia (1602) Euro- by Juan de Silva. They received their death-blow in Spain at the pean hands of Don Quixote in 1605, and even those of the greatest merit couu- and popularity almost entirely ceased to be reprinted after that tries. date. Although the pastoral romance of Diana (1560) by Monte-mayor does not really belong to the present subject, it should be mentioned as forming a distinct school of fiction with a family of successors scarcely less numerous than the lineage of Amadis. It was continued by Gil Polo, and in it, as in the Galatea (1584) of Cervantes, figure real persons and incidents. The earliest re-presentative of the picaresque tale is to be found in Lazarillo de Tormes (1554).

The heroic romance never became thoroughly naturalized in Portugal, and the narrative class chiefly found its way through Spain. The romancists Rodriguez Lobo, Eloi de Sd Sotomayor, and Pires de Rebello may be mentioned. The Menina e Moça (1554) of Bernardim Ribeiro is the earliest specimen of the pastoral style in the Portuguese language.

Although the Pastoralia of Longus is to be considered as the remote prototype of the modern works, Arcadia (1502), the Italian poem of Sannazaro, undoubtedly influenced the Diana of Monte-mayor, and through it inspired the Arcadia of Sir Philip Sidney. A few translations and weak imitations of foreign romances were printed in Italy in the 16th and 17th centuries, but novelle or short tales formed the staple of the national prose fiction during that period.

French romance—translations of Amadis in the 16th and the writings of Mademoiselle de Scudéry and her compeers in the 17th century—exercised a supreme influence in Germany, where the pastoral romance was represented by innumerable "Schäfereien." Herkules und Valisea (1659) of A. H. Bueholz is a specimen of the voluminous and tiresome heroic romance of the period. Simplicis-simus (1669) by Hans Jakob von Grimmelshausen, in which the hero traverses the scenes of the Thirty Years' War, is less a romance than the first national novel. C. W. Hagdom's Jcquan, oder der grosse Mogul (1670) is an adaptation of La Calprenède's C'assandre, and E. W. Happel's Der instilanische Mandorell (1682) is a kind of foreshadowing of Robinson Crusoe. Two of the most admired fic-tions of the time were the Asiatische Banise (1688) of H. Anselm von Zicgler und Klipphausen and the Arminius und Thusnelda (1689) of D. K. von Lohenstein. Historical tales and love stories were the chief favourites at the end of the 17th and "Robin-sonaden" or imitations of Defoe in the second quarter of the 18th century.

In Holland the French heroic school was mirrored in the works of Johan van Heemskerk, Hendrik Zoeteboom, and Lambertus Bos, published in the middle of the 17th century.

GENERAL LITERATURE OF MEDIAEVAL ROMANCE.—Modern critical editions of the chansons and romances invariably contain literary introductions. Most of these have been already referred to. For the general history of the subject, see [Bp. R. Hurd] Letters on Chivalry and Romance, 1762 ; Clara Heeve, The Progress o/Äomon«,Colchester,1785, 2 vols. ; J. Moore, "View of the Commence-ment and Progress of Romance " (preface to IForfc, of T. Smollett, 1797, 8 vols.) ; J. Ritson, " Diss, on Romances and Minstrelsy" (vol. i. of Ancient Metr. Rom., 1S02, 3 vols.) ; W. J. Thorns, Coll. of Early English Prose Romances, London, 1828, 3 vols., new ed. 1858; T. Warton, "Origin of Romantic Fiction in Europe" (History of Eng. Poetry, London, 1840, 8 vols.) ; G. Ellis, Specimens of Early Eng. Metr. Romances, new ed. by Halliwell, 1848, 8vo ; J. Dunlop, History of Fiction, 1816, 3 vols., and London, 1S45, roy. Svo, still the best general history of the subject, and not very much improved in the German translation by F. Liebrecht, Berlin, 1851, roy. 8vo ; J. Nigroni, Diss, de lectione Hub. amatoriorum, Louvain, 1624 ; Langlois (Fancan), Le tombeau des romans, 1626 ; P. D. Huet, De l'origine des romans, 1711 ; Histoire littéraire de la France, 1733-1881, 28 vols. 4to ; [N. Lenglet Dufresnoy], De l'usage des romans, avec une bibl. des romans, Amster-dam, 1734, 2 vols. 12mo, and L'histoire justifiée contre les romans, Amsterdam, 1735 ; [Jaequin], Entretiens sur les romans, 1755 ; [Boucher de la Ricnarderie], Lettre sur les romans, 1762 ; Lacurne de Ste Palaye, " Mém. concernant la lecture des anciens romans" (Hist, et Mém. de l'Acad. des Inscr., vol. xvii.) ; J. Chapelain, De la lecture des vieux romans, ed. Feillet, 1S70 ; Bibliothèque universelle des romans, 1775-89, 112 vols. 12mo, containing analyses of most of the romances, over 40 vols, being edited by De Paulmy, the remainder by Le Grand d'Aussy, Tressan, &c.,—the new edition by Bastide (Paris, 1782, 4to) stopped in the middle of the third volume ; Nouvelle Bibliothèque, 1798-1805, 56 vols. 12mo ; De Paulmy and Contant d'Orville, Mélanges tirés d'une grande bibliothèque, 1779-S8, 69 vols. 8vo,—Le Grand d'Aussy helped in this work, which contains many analyses and a bibliography ; Tressan, Corps d'extraits de romans de chevalerie, 1782, 4 vols. 12mo ; C. de Caylus, "Sur l'origine de l'ancienne chevalerie et des anciens romans " (Hist, et Mém. de l'Acad. des Inscr., vol. xxiii.) ; L. Dutens, Tables généalogiques des héros de romans, 1796, 4to ; J. Michelet, "Sur les épopées du Moyen Age " (in Rev. des D. M., July 1831) ; A. P. Paris, Réponse à M. Michelet, 1831 ; J. J. Ampère, Histoire littéraire de la France, 1839-40, 3 vols. ; A. Ch. Gidel, Étude sur la littérature grecque moderne et nos romans de clievalerie, 1S46; A. P. Paris, "Romans" (Lacroix, Le Moyen ge et la Renaissance, vol. ii., 1S49) ; E. du Méril, Poésies populaires latines antérieures au Xlle siècle, 1843 ; L. Gautier, Hist, des proses jusqu'à la fin du Xlle siècle, 1858 ; A. Maury, Croyances et légendes de l'antiquité, 1863 ; L. Moland, Origines littéraires de la France, 1S63 ; A. Delvau, Coll. de romans de chevalerie, 1869, 4 vols, (abridg-ments) ; Fr. H. von der Hagen, Heldenbilder aus d. Sagenkreisen, Breslau, 1823, 3 vols. ; J. G. T. Graesse, Die grossen Sagenkreise des Mittelalters, Dresden, 1842, bibliographical and literary, but showing extraordinary industry and grasp of the materials; F. Diez, Altromanisclie Sprachdenkmäler, Bonn, 1846 ; O. L. B. Wölfl', Ally. Geschichte des Romans, Jena, 1850 ; F. W. Val. Schmidt, Les romans en prose des cycles de la Table Ronde et de Charlemagne, trans, by F. de Roisin, St Omer, 1845 ; K. Goedeke, Deutsche Dichtung im Mittelaller, Dresden, 1871 ; F. Henrion, Istoria de' Romanzi di Cavalleria, Florence, 1794 ; G. Ferrario, Sloria ed Analisi degli Antichi Romarzi d'Ilalia, Milan, 1828-29, 4 vols. 8vo ; A. de Gubernatis, Storia della Letteratura (ix.-x., Roinanzo), 2 vols. sin. 8vo, 18S3 ; see also numerous articles in Jahrbücher für romanische u. engl. Litteratur, Anglia, Revue Celtique, Romania, Revue des langues romanes, &c.

ARTHURIAN CYCLE.—Lady Ch. Guest, The Mdbinogion, 1838-50, 3 vols. ; Th. Hersait de la Villemarqué, Contes pop. de la Bretagne (1840, 2 vols.), Ixs Bardes Bretons (1S60), Les Romans de la Table Ronde (1861), and Myrdhinn, ou l'En-chanteur Merlin (1862) ; San Marte [A. Schulz], Die Sagen von Merlin (Halle, 1853), and Parceval-Studien (Berlin, 1S61-62, 3 pts.); [F. Zambrini], Dell' Il-lustre Historia di Lancillotto del Lago, Bologna, 1S62 ; " I.a Tavola Ritonda, o l'Historia di Tristano" (Acad. Bologna, R. Com., 1863); E. F. Leith, The Legend of Tristan, 186S ; A. P. Paris, Les romans de la Table Ronde, 1868-77, 5 vols. ; Skene, Four Ane. Books of Wales, 1S68, 2 vols. ; J. S. Stuart-Glennie, Arthurian Localities, 1869 ; F. G. Bergmann, The San Greal, 1870 ; G. E. R., The Story of Merlin and Vivien, [1879] ; E. F. F. Hucher, Sur les représentations de Tristan et d'Yseult dans les monuments, 1871, and Le Saint Gral, Le Mans, 1S74-77, 3 vols.; W. B. Odgers, King Arthur and the Arthurian Romances, [LS72] ; A. Birch-Hirschfeld, Die Sage vom Graal, Leipsic, 1877 ; C. Domanig, Parcival-Studien, 1878 ; L. Kraussold, Die Sage vom Heil. Gral, 1878 ; E. Martin, Zur Gralsage, 1880.

CHARLEMAGNE CYCLE.—J. C. v. Aretin, Aelteste Sage über die Geburt . . . Karls d. Gr., Munich, 1803 ; L. Uhland, " Ueber das altfranzösische Epos " (in Fouqué's Musen, 1812, pt. 3) ; F. W. Val. Schmidt, Ueber die italienischen Heldengedichte aus d. Sagenkreis Karls des Gr., Berlin, 1820 ; E. Aignan, Ro. mances tirées des anciennes hist, des 12 Pairs (vol. iii. of Bibliothèque Élrangèrej Paris, 1823) ; Romans des douze pairs de France, Paris, 1832-42, 9 vols. ; A. P] Paris, " Sur les romans des douze pairs " (pref. to Berte aux gram piés, 1832)

and "Examen da système de M. Fauriel" (prefixed to Soman de Garin le Loherain, Paris, 1833, 2 vols. 12mo) ; Fauriel, "De l'origine de l'épopée cheval, du moyen âge " {Rev. des Deux Mondes, 1832, vols. vii. and viii. ) ; F. "Wolf, lieber d. altfranz. Heldengedichte, Vienna, 1S33 ; Baehr, Gesch. d. ___. Lit. im karoling. Zeitalter, Karlsruhe, 1840 ; W. "Wittenbach, Der Mönch von Sanct Gallen über die Thaten Karls des Grossen, Berlin, 1850 ; Merzdorf, Karolellus, Oldenburg, 1855, 8vo ; C. d'Héricault, Sur l'origine de l'épopée française, 1860 ; F. Guessard, Les anciens poètes de la France, 1859 sq. ; Charlemagne romances (prose and verse), pub. by Early Eng. Text Soc, pts. 1-10, 1879-84 ; K. Bartsch, Ueber Karl Meinet, Nuremberg, 1861 ; G. Paris, De pseudo-Turpino, Paris, 1865, and Histoire poétique de Charlemagne, Paris, 1865 ; L. Gautier, Les epopees françaises, 2d ed., 1878 sq., 4 vols.
SPANISH CYCLE.—For the literary history, see E. Baret, De l'Amadis de Gaule et de son influence, 2d ed. 1S73 ; L. Braunfels, Krit. Versuch über den Roman Amadis von Gallien, 187Ö ; A. Pages, La bibliothèque de Don Quichotte: A. de Gaule, 1868 ; P. de Gayangos, Libros de Caballerias [Amadis y Esplandlan], con un discurso preliminar y un catalogo razonado, Madrid, 1857, an able and useful work; F. A. de Varnhagen, Da-Jtteratura dos Livros de Cavallarias, Vienna, 1872 ; Sir W. Scott,"Amadis of Gaul" (Edinb. Rev., October 1S03) ; prefaces to Southey's trans, of Amadis of Gaul, 1803, 4 vols., and of Palmerin of England, 1807, 4 vols. For the bibliography, see Barbosa Machado, Bibliotheca Lusitana, Lisbon, 1741-59, 4 vols, folio ; N. Antonio, Bibliotheca Hispana, Madrid, 1783-88, 4 vols, folio ; article by Salva in the Repertorio Americano, August 1827, pp. 29-39 ; articles in the Wiener Jahrbücher, xxvi., xxix., xxxi., xxxiii., lix. ; G. Brunet, " Étude sur les romans de chevalerie espagnols" (Bull, du Bibliophile, April, May, June, 1861); P. Salva y Malien, Cat. de la Biblioteca de Salva, Valencia, 1862, 2 vols. ; B. J. Gallardo, Ensayo de una Biblioteca Espanola, Madrid, 1862-66, 2 vols. ; D. Hidalgo, Diccionario General, Madrid, 1862-79, 6 vols. In the first volume of A. J. Duffield's trans, of Don Quixote, 1881, may be seen a long list of the Spanish romances. See also J. Ormsby, "The Spanish Romances of Chivalry" (trans, of Don Quixote, 1885, vol. iv.).

TEUTONIC, DANO-ENGLISH, &C— See F. J. Mone, Untersuchungen zur teutschen Heldensage, Quedlinburg, 1836, Svo ; F. H. von der Hagen, Minnesinger, Leipsic, 1838, 4 vols. 4to, and Gesammtabenteuer, Stuttgart, 1850, 3 vols. ; H. A. Keller, Rômvart, Mannheim, 1844 ; G. G. Gervinus, Gesch. der deutschen Dichtung, Leipsic, 1871-74, 5 vols. ; _. Goedeke, Deutsche Dichtung im Mittelalter, Dresden, 1871, 8vo ; A. Bossert, La litt, allemande au Moyen ___ et les origines de l'épopée ger-manique, Paris, 1S71 ; A. Nusch, Zur Verg'leichung des Nibelungenliedes mit der Ilias, Spires, 1S63 ; Stolte, Der Nibelungen-Nôt verglichen mit der Ilias, Rietberg, 1869 ; M. Türk, Zur Vergleichung, &c, Cronstadt, 1873 ; O. Schade, "Homer u. d. Nibelungen" (Wissenschaft!. Monatsbl., in., 1875); A. G. Richey, "The Homeric Question and the Teutonic Epics " (Hermathena, 1S76) ; J. Zupitza, Zur Literaturgeschichte des Guy v. Warwick, Vienna, 1873 ; A. Tanner, Die Sage von Guy von Warwick, 1877 ; T. Wissmann, " King Horn " (Brink u. Scherer's Quellen, No. 16, 1876); R. Brede, "Ueber die Handschriften der Chanson de Horn" (E. M. Stengel's Ausgaben, 1883, pt. 3); F. Ludorff, Ueber die Sprache des Havelok le Danois, 1S74, 8vo.
MODERN ROMANCE.—For general works see the separate articles on the great European literatures. The following are some special treatises :—Biblio-thek der Romane, Riga, 1782, 21 vols. ; J. Schmidt, Geschichte der Romantik, Leipsic, 1848, 2 vols. ; J. v. Eichendorff, Der deutsche Roman des XVlIIten Jahrh., Leipsic, 1851; Cholevius, Die bedeutendsten deutschen Romane des XVIIten Jahrh., Leipsic, 1866 ; F. Bobertag, Geschichte des Romans in Deutschland, Breslau, 1876-79 ; H. Körting, Geschichte des französischen Romans im XVIlteii Jahrh., Leipsic, 1S85, pt. 1 ; D. Masson, British Novelist? and their Styles, Cambridge, 1S59 ; B. Tuckerman, History of English Prose Fiction, New York, 1882.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.—It has been impossible to do more than indicate the dates and places of the first printed editions of the romances. More full information is to be sought for in J. C. Brunet, Manuel du libraire, 1860-65, 6 vols., Supplement by P, Deschamps and G. Brunet, 1878-80, 2 vols. ; J. G. T. Graesse, Trésor. de livres rares et précieux, Dresden, 1859-69, 7 vols. 4to ; G. Brunet, La France littéraire au XVe siècle, Paris, 1865 ; A. Firmin-Didot, Essai de classification des romans de chevalerie, 1S70, an admirable and careful work ; J. Ames and "W. Herbert, Typ. Antiquities, London, 1785-90, 3 vols. 4to ; "VV. T. Lowndes, Bibliographer's Manual, ed. H. G. Bohn, London, 1S57-64, 6 vols. ; W. Blades, JÀfe of W. Caxton, London, 1S61-63, 2 vols. 4to ; B. Quaritch, Catalogue of Romances of Chivalry, 1882 ; G. Melzi, Bibliografia dei romanzi e poemi cav. italiani, extended by P. A. Tosi, Milan, 1865,12mo, first published as supplement to Ferrario, Storia ; P. Paris, Les MSS. français de la Bibl. du Roi, 1835-48, 7 vols., with many extracts and accounts of romances ; H. L. D. Ward, Catalogue of Romances in the Department of MSS. in the British Museum, vol. i., London, 1883, a most valuable and scholarly essay, and the most important work yet published on romance. (H. R. T.—M. K.)


Footnotes

In the 9th century the Romana or Romance language made its first appearance in writing. For many centuries, however, it was only used to embody the tales and ballads of each country in which one or other form of the speech was vernacular, so that the word " romance " became finally appropriated to the compositions which were the stable literature of the Lingua Romana or Romance.

Strabo considered all those who had written about India down to his time as mere iictionists, and at their head he placed Daimachus and Megasthenes. From the analysis furnished by Diodorus Siculus (ii. 55-60) of the Fortunate Island of Iambulus we are led to believe that the writer, who lived before the 1st century, intended the work as a kind of social Utopia similar to the Atlantis,—full of marvels and surprises like all the other imaginary voyages.

The name of Homer never ceased to be held in honour ; but lie is invariably placed in company with the Latin poets. Few of those who praised him had read him except in the Latin redaction in 1100 verses whicli passed under the name of Pindar. It supplied the chief incidents of the Iliad with tolerable exactness and was taught in
schools.

- The Middle Ages had their Latin Oresteia, see Orestis Tragosdin, carmen epicum seculo post Christum natuni sexto compositum, ed. S. Schenkl, Prague, 1867, 8vo.

The author of the much-quoted line, "Incidis in Scillam cupiens
vitare Charybdim." The twelve-syllabic verse known as alexandrine is supposed to have taken its name from being first used in the French (reste d'Alexandre-

2 The Irish apostle to Carinthia, St Virgilius, bishop of Salzburg (d. 784), who held original views on the subject of antipodes, may have been the real eponym of the legend. Naples was a ceutre for pseudo-Virgilian stories.

His poem on the Life and Prophecies of Merlin was a separate work, published in 1136-37 and again in 1149.

Hugh of Rutland's poem of Ipomedon (written in 1185) evinces by the names of its personages such an acquaintance with the Thebais of Statius as the maker of the Lancelot seems to have had with the Achilleis of the same poet. He usually calls his King Arthur Atreus.
Yguerne, the name of Arthur's mother, was perhaps akin in its

original British sense (although in Cymric it means " the true " or " the

The names of several beings of this mixed nature in the early romances begin with the same word, mer, merhl, or mel, as Merlin, Melusine, Melior, Melion.

When we remember that the Ambrosius Aurelius of Gildas was probably the Arthur of Nennius and the romances, and that Merlin was called Ambrosius Merlinus, we are drawn to believe in the Romano-Briton origin of the stories, and to conclude that " Arthur " and " Mer-lin " are two explicative or distinguishing enithets attached to the older names.

In the second Arthurian compilation Tristan is annexed to tne knights of the Round Table, and joins the quest, but the original story is quite independent

As Chrestien never finished his poem, and as he had two or three continu-ators before 1244, he may not be responsible for the Borronesque ending ; but it is to be remarked that Robert de Borron and Chrestien were both from Cham-pagne.
Whatever he the meaning of the Welsh name Peredur, that of Perceval

seera3 to be also British and to mean "possessor of the Grail." It may not have been one man's appellation but a title applicable to Bron, Alan, or the last achiever. The British words of which it seems compounded are perchen, a


3 His father Meliadus and mother Isabel, as well as the preceding genera, tions of ancestors, were probably invented by Helie de Borron, as weli as the account of his premature birth in the open country.
* Is this a corruption ot Muircheartarch or Murhartarch, and, if so, was it suggested by a recollection of the visit of Diarmuid MacMuircheartarch to England to claim help from the Normans in 1168?

Guiron appears to be the Breton or Cymric word which means "loyal," " true," or "honest," and is a fitting title for the hero.

Under AMADIS of Gaul (vol. i. p. 650) may be seen the different references in Don Quixote to the romance.

Until recently bibliographers considered an edition printed at Salamanca in 1519 as the editio princeps, although Olemencin and others cited one of 1510, which no one had seen. A most interesting discovery was, however, made at Ferrara in 1872 of an entirely unheard-of edition produced at Saragossa by G. Coci in 1508.
From the French translation "Le beau ténébreux" comes the popular application of the phrase to taciturn and melancholy lovers. The episode, parodied by Cervantes, is derived from the romance of Tristan. Amadis was also known by the names of the Knight of the Sword and the Greek Knight.

This kind of incident, which is frequently to be found in the subse-quent books as a test of chastity, is connected with the kindred story of the ill-fitting cloak in the Arthurian legend. Spenser uses it in the Faerie Queene (iii. 12) where,
" The maske of Cupid and th' enchant-ed Chamber are displayed."