(that is to say before the later part of the 15th century) which could be called obscene by any fair judge. And the term would have to be somewhat strained in reference even to these. The contrast with the companion divisions of fabliaux and farces is quite extraordinary; and nearly as sharp as that between Greek tragedy on the one hand and Greek comedy or satiric play on the other. It is brought out for the merely English reader in Chaucer of course, but in him it might have been studied. In the immense corpus of known or unknown French and English writers (the Germans are not quite so particular) it comes out with no possibility of deliberation and with unmistakable force.
The history of the forms in which romance presents itself follows a sufficiently normal and probable course. The oldest Development. are always—save in the single case of part of the Arthurian division, in which we probably possess none of the actually oldest, and in some of the division of Antiquity which had a long line of predecessors in the learned languages—the shortest. They become lengthened in a way continued and exemplified to the present moment by the tendency of writers to add sequels and episodes to their own stories, and made still more natural by the fact that these poems were in all or almost all cases recited. “Go on” is the most natural and not the least common as well as the most complimentary form of “Bravo!” and the reciter never seems to have said “no” to the compliment. In not a few cases—Huon of Bordeaux, Ogier the Dane, Guy of Warwick, are conspicuous examples—we possess the same story in various stages; and can see how poems, perhaps originally like King Horn of not more than a couple of thousand lines or even shorter in the 13th century, grew to thirty, forty, fifty thousand in the 15th. The transference of the story itself from verse to prose is also—save in some particular and still controverted instances—regularly traceable and part of a larger and natural literary movement. While, also naturally enough, the pieces become in time fuller of conversation (though not as yet often of conversation that advances the story or heightens its interest), of descriptive detail, &c. And in some groups (notably that of the remarkable Amadis division) a very great enlargement of the proportion and degradation of the character of the marvellous element appears—the wonders being no longer mystical, and magical only in the lower sense.
And so we come to the particular characteristics of the kind or kinds in individual examples. Of these the English reader Characteristic examples. has a matchless though late instance in the Morte d'Arthur of Malory, a book which is at once a corpus and a pattern of romance in gross and in detail. The fact that it is not, as has been too often hastily or ignorantly asserted, a mere compilation, but the last of a singular series of rehandlings and redactions—conducted with extraordinary though for the most part indistinctly traceable instinct of genius—makes it to some extent transcend any single example of older date and more isolated composition. But it displays all the best as well as some of the less good characteristics of most if not all. Of the commonest kind—the almost pure roman d'adventures itself-the Gareth-Beaumains episode (for which we have no direct original, French or English, though Lybius Disconus and Ipomedon come near to it in different ways) will give a fair example; while its presentation of the later chapters of the Grail story, and the intertwisted plot and continuing catastrophe of the love of Lancelot and Guinevere, altogether transcend the usual scope of romance pure and simple, and introduce almost the highest possibilities of the romantic novel. The way in which Malory or his immediate authorities have extruded the tedious wars round the “Rock of the Saxons,” have dropped the awkward episode of the false Guinevere, and have restrained the uninteresting exuberance of the continental wars and the preliminary struggles with the minor kings, keeps the reader from contact with the duller sides of romance only. Of the real variety which rewards a persistent reader of the class at large it would be impossible to present even a miniature hand-index here; but something may be done by sample, which will not be mere sample, but an integral part of the exposition. No arbitrary separation need be made between French and English; because of the intimate connexion between the two. As specially and symptomatically noteworthy the famous pair—perhaps the most famous of all—Guy of Warwick and Bevis of Hampton, should not be taken. For, with the exception of the separation of Guy and Felise in the first, and some things in the character of Josiane in the second, both are somewhat spiritless concoctions of stock matter. Far more striking than anything in either, though not consummately supported by their context, are the bold opening of Blancandin et l'orgueilleuse d'amour, where the hero begins by kissing a specially proud and prudish lady; and the fine scenes of fight with a supernatural foe at a grave to be found in Amadas et Idoine. Reputation and value coincide more nearly in the charming fairy story of Parthenopex de Blois and the Christian-Saracen love romance of Flore (Florice and other forms) et Blanchefleur. Few romances in either language, or in German, exhibit the pure adventure story better than Chrestien de Troyes's Chevalier au Lyon, especially in its English form of Ywain and Gawain; while the above-mentioned Lybius Disconus (Le Beau Déconnu) makes a good pair with this. For originality of form and phrase as well as of spirit, if not exactly of incident, Gawain and the Green Knight stands alone; but another Gawain story (in French this time), Le Cheralieur aux deux épées, though of much less force and fire, exceeds it in length without sameness of adventure. Only the poorest romances—those ridiculed by Chaucer in Sir Thopas—which form a small minority, lack striking individual touches, such as the picture of the tree covered with torches and carrying on its summit a heavenly child, which illuminates the huge expanse of Durmart le Gallois. The various forms of the Seven Wise Masters in different European languages show the attitude of the Western to the Eastern fiction interestingly. The beautiful romance of Emarè is about the best of several treatments of one of the exceptional subjects classed above—the unnatural love of father for daughter, while if we turn to German stories we find not merely in the German variants of Arthurian themes, but in others a double portion of the mystical element. French themes are constantly worked up afresh—as indeed they are all over Europe—but the Germans have the advantage of drawing upon not merely Scandinavian traditions like those which they wrought into the Nibelungen Lied and Gudrun, but others of their own. And both in these and in their dealings with French they sometimes show an amount of story-telling power which is rare in French and English. No handling of the Tristan and Iseult story can compare with Gottfried's; while the famous Der arme Heinrich of Hartmann von Aue (the original of Longfellow's Golden Legend) is one of the greatest triumphs and most charming examples of romance, displaying in almost the highest degree possible for a story of little complexity all the best characteristics of the thing.
What, then, are these characteristics? The account has now been brought to a point where a reasoned résumé of it will give as definite an answer as can be given.
Even yet we may with advantage interpose a consideration of the answer that was given to this question universally (with Summary of opinion and fact. a few dissidents) from the Renaissance to nearly the end of the 18th century and not infrequently since; while it is not impossible that, in the well-attested revolutions of critical thought and taste, it may be given again. This is that romance on the whole, and with some flashes of better things at times, is a jumble of incoherent and mostly ill-told stories, combining sameness with extravagance, outraging probability and the laws of imitative form, childish as a rule in its appeal to adventure and to the supernatural, immoral in its ethics, barbarous in its aesthetics, destitute of any philosophy, representing at its very best (though the ages of its lowest appreciation were hardly able even to consider this) a necessary stage in the education of half-civilized peoples, and embodying some interesting legends, much curious folklore and a certain amount of distorted historical evidence. On
