dragons and monsters."[1] Now, this is unequivocally nothing less than the entire machinery employed in all the Arabian Tales, and in every other oriental fiction. Such a coincidence no one will suppose the result of accident; nor can it for a moment be believed that the warm imaginations of the East—where Nature brightens the fancy equally with the flowers—borrowed it from the colder conceptions of the Northern bards. Many parts of the Old Testament demonstrate familiarity with spells; and Solomon (which proves a traditional intercourse, at least, between the Jews and other people of the East), by universal consent, has been enthroned sovereign of the Genii, and lord of the powerful Talisman. In David and Goliath, we trace the contests of knights with giants: in the adventures of Samson, perhaps, the miraculous feats attributed to the heroes of chivalry. In the apocryphal Book of Tobit, we have an angel in the room of a saint; enchantments, antidotes, distressed damsels, demons, and most of the other machinery of the occidental romance.[2] Parts of the Pentateuch, of Kings, &c., &c., appear to have been amplified, and rendered wild and fabulous; and were the comparison carried minutely forward, I am persuaded that the analogy would be found as striking as distinct. I mean not that this has always been the immediate source: I am rather inclined to suppose that certain ramifications, direct from the East, already dilated and improved, were more generally the origin. But Scripture, in many cases, furnished a supernatural agency without pursuing this circuitous route; as well as heroes with all the attributes of ancient romance. In the old French prose of Sir Outel, chap, xxiv., we have the following exclamations on the death of the knight Roland, which partly confirm my observation:—"Comparé à Judas Machabeus par ta valeur et prouesse; ressemblant à Sanson, et pareil à Jonatas fils de Saul par la fortune de sa triste morte!" The Jewish Talmud, and especially the commentary upon it, abounds with fables, composed in some respects of the materials worked up by the Scalds, but long anterior in date to their compositions, so far as they are known.
Dr. Percy contends that "old writers of chivalry appear utterly unacquainted with whatever relates to the Mahometan nations, and represent them, as worshipping idols, or adoring a golden image of Mahomet."[3] This, I should conceive, would naturally be the case. It was the aim of Christian writers to represent the infidels in the
