(as frequently happens) by an attendant musician, who gives the tone to their recitative, and fills up the pauses between the stanzas by a few notes on his instrument. The third character, or disour, is also to be found in many parts of Italy, but particularly at Venice; where, mounted on a temporary scaffolding, or sometimes on a stool or barrel, he recites from memory whole cantos of Ariosto.

The situation of a minstrel prescribed to him the choice of his subject. Addressing himself to an audience who lived only for the purpose of fighting, and who considered their time as of little value when otherwise employed, he was sure of being listened to with patience and credulity so long as he could tell of heroes and enchanters and he could be at no loss for either, because the histories of all the heroes and enchanters that the world had produced were to be found in a few volumes of easy access.

As vanity is not easily subdued, a people who are not quite satisfied with their present insignificance will often be tempted to indemnify themselves by a retrospective warfare on their enemies; and will be the more prodigal in assigning triumphs to their heroic ancestors, because those who in former ages contested the battle can no longer be

1

brought forward to dispute the claim of victory. This will explain the numerous triumphs of KING ARTHUR. We have already seen, that a book in the British tongue, containing the relation of his exploits, and of those of his knights of the round table, and of his faithful enchanter, Merlin, together with the antecedent history of the British kings from the destruction of Troy, was by Walter, archdeacon of Oxford, a learned antiquary of those days, confided to GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH, a Welsh Benedictine monk, afterwards bishop of St. Asaph, who translated it into Latin, with some additions and interpolations. The French translations of Wace and Rusticien de Pise,* and the Saxon and English versions of Layamon and Robert de Brunne, laid open this mass of history to readers of every description.

A second work, equally abounding in marvellous adventures, and apparently written about the same time with Geoffrey of Monmouth's chronicle, is THE HISTORY OF CHARLEMAGNE AND THE TWELVE PEERS of FRANCE, forged under the name of TURPIN, a monk of the eighth century, who, for his services against the Saracens, was raised to the archbishoprick of Rheims. The real author was perhaps a Spaniard. This work was translated * Vide supra, p. 44,

from Latin into French by Michael de Harnes, in 1207.*

The third source of romantic fiction was THE HISTORYOF TROY. Homer's works were unknown at the period of which we are speaking, but the story was kept alive in two Latin pieces, which passed under the names of DARES PHRYGIUS, and DICTYS CRETENSIS; and from these, as we have already seen, a French poem on the Trojan war had been compiled by Benoit de St. More, the contemporary and rival of Wace. A more improved compilation from the same sources, under the title of Historia de Bello Trojano, comprehending the Theban and Argonautic stories, from Ovid, Statius, and Valerius Flaccus, was written by GUIDO DE COLONNA, a native of Messina, about the year 1260.

ALEXANDER THE GREAT was known to the writers of romance not only by translations from Quintus Curtius, an author much admired in the middle ages, but also by a work much better suited to the purposes of the historians of chivalry, originally

* Mr. Ritson says that Michael de Harnes did not translate the pseudo-Turpin's History of Roland's achievements in Spain, but a very different work, comprehending the adventures of another of Charlemagne's knights, viz. Renaud de Montauban.

written in Persic, and translated into Greek, under the assumed name of Callisthenes, by SIMEON SETH, keeper of the wardrobe at Constantinople to the emperor Michael Ducas, about the year 1070. Such a narrative could not fail of obtaining a very general circulation. A Latin translation of it is quoted by Giraldus Cambrensis; and the famous Roman d' Alexandre, written (as Fauchet tells us) about the year 1200, by four confederates " en "jonglerie," appears to be partly a paraphrase of that translation.

THESE FOUR WORKS may be considered as the foundation on which was erected the vast Gothic fabric of romance; and materials for the superstructure were readily found in an age when anecdotes and apologues were thought very necessary even to discourses delivered from the pulpit, and when all the fables that could be gleaned from ancient writings, or from the relations of travellers, were collected into story-books, and preserved by the learned for that purpose.

The GESTA ROMANORUM, a work of this description, which is still very common, appears to have had so great an influence on the literature of Europe during the romantic ages, that Mr. Warton has thought it deserving of a dissertation of ninety-seven pages. He also mentions a manuscript collection

of 215 stories, preserved in the Museum, which was evidently compiled by a professed preacher for the use of the monastic societies. The legendary lives of the saints were no bad repositories of anecdote: and the bards of Armorica, who had supplied Geoffrey of Monmouth's regular history, continued to contribute detached fragments, or what we might now call memoirs, of the court of King Arthur, which were successively converted into French lays and fabliaux.

If we should search in real history for a model of that imaginary excellence which constituted a hero of romance, we should find it in the person of our Richard I. He was profusely liberal, particularly to the minstrels: he was, perhaps, himself a minstrel; he possessed the most astonishing bodily strength, and the most intrepid valour, sufficiently blended with enthusiasm, and directed to no intelligible purpose. The poets whom he patronized, would have been no less deficient in taste than in gratitude, had they failed to place him after his the heroes whom he imitated, and

death

among

perhaps surpassed; particularly as the materials for his apotheosis were to be found in all languages and countries. Tanner mentions (says Mr. Warton), as a poet of England one Gulielmus Peregrinus who accompanied Richard I. into the Holy Land,