not mean merely that the ways and customs of the foreigners offered material to the Greek poets for decoration and accessory effects. I mean a provocative influence. There was a demand for fiction of the same class as the French romances, and Greek writers responded to it not only by versions, but also by original creations. These creations, however, are of Greek, not foreign parentage; they have a native, not a foreign tradition behind them—the mediaeval epic and the amorous fiction which originated in the Hellenistic age. They are inferior to the best compositions of the French poets; nothing was produced that could be compared remotely, for instance, with Aucassin et Nicolette. They have not the stamp of cosmopolitan literature. You may care for them or not, but they are not exotics nor second-hand imitations. Western Europe played a decisive part in creating the social conditions under which they appeared; but they are in all essential features, in spirit and matter, as well as in form, an outcome of indigenous development, the legitimate progeny of a literature which was always accustomed to take little and give much.
Oxford: Printed at the Clarendon Press by Horace Hart, M.A.
