Romance

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Romance

interesting group of 'Greek romances' \vhich
are scattered over the centuries (from fourth
to twelfth). The qualities thus sparsely vis-
ible reappear in mediaeval literature unmis-
takably.

The classic limitations of unity, measure,
and so forth were certainly attended to in
most epic poems by the poets; it was a rule
laid down that nothing should be left totally
unexplained, and that nothing should hap-
pen without some connection (if it were only
that of episode) with the main plot. In ro-
mance all this was changed. Christianity itself
not merely supplied a mythology much more
resembling these other religions than the of-
ficial paganism of Rome, but gave the most
powerful assistance to the supernatural at-
mosphere of romance by its attitude toward
the one and the other.

Again, the strictly critical spirit was almost
dormant in the middle ages; and the ro-
mance, as such, was written not according to
rule, but merely to please. If the adventures
were exciting, the descriptions brilliant, the
hero and the heroine attractive, what more
could be wanted? War maintained, with ne-
cessary changes, the claims it had exerted on
the ancients, and Religion immensely in-
creased them. It is not quite certain even that
saints' lives are not the earliest examples of
rudimentary romance, as we have them in the
vernaculars, and earlier still in Latin.

But the third great theme which, though it
could not be kept out entirely, had been
snubbed and kept down in antiquity —the
theme of love—received an extension greater
still, and always increasing as time went on.
It became the invariable (and too often triv-
ial) motive of the later romances of adven-
ture. In fact, the typical mediaeval, romance
may be said to be a love story diversified ad
libitum by episodes of adventure, and dom-
inated by the religious note, which often,
though not always, shades off into semitones
of outer and vaguer superstition.

It could require no extraordinary origin-
ality to perceive that narrative of this sort
might be adapted to less serious subjects and
yet retain its interest of adventure. The ex-
treme beauty of some of these stories, and
the story interest of all but the dullest, could
not fail of their effect; and the charm of
story-telling once exercised, the reflection that
it might be enjoyed for work day as well as
Sunday use could not fail to follow.

There seems to be little if any doubt that
the first remarkable examples of the complet-
ed product of the typical romance of love.

adventure, and (mainly religious) mystery
are found in connection with the legend of
King Arthur, of the Knights of the Round
Table, and of the Quest for the Holy Grail.
It is remarkable that no single romance ever
incorporated the whole or even any very
considerable part of this group of legends,
the best-known record of it in England, the
Morte d'Arthur of Sir Thomas Malory, be-
ing a fifteenth-century compilation from var-
ious originals, from before 1200 to Malory*s
own time.

The most numerous class of romances
deals with the adventures of individual
knights, and (in somewhat less number)
ladies, whose course of true love or rightfu)
hcirship is interrupted by fate or human
wickedness, but who invariably triumph, and
generally marry, at the end. Of these, the
most famous and popular, though by no
means the best of literature in any form that
we possess, were probably the stories of Sir
Guy of Warwick and Sir Bevis oj Hampton.
All of these but two or three at most are of
substantive interest; and it has sometimes
been thought that four of the best of them—
Seven Wise Masters, Arthur and MerHn,
Alexander, and Richard Cceur de Lion—we
the work of a single though unknown hand.

Still later is the lovely fairy story of Sir
Launfal, written (or rather rewritten) by a
known person, Thomas Chester, early in the
15th century. Almost all that can be said
against the poorer specimens of the common
run of romances has been put with extraor-
dinary felicity and admirable wit by Chau-
cer in Sir Thopas—the conventional beauty
and valor of the knight, his determination to
fall in love with somebody very lovely, very
exalted, and very difficult of attainment, the
haphazard geography and etceteras of the
story, the vain repetition of detail, the giants
and evil beasts that get in the hero's way.
Other faults are the extreme long-windedness
of some of the romances, the intolerable
amount of mere catalogue description, the
inevitable tendency of all recited work to
clicM repetition of stock phrase.

Really brilliant phrase, the 'gold dewdrops
of speech,' for which Chaucer himself was
so justly praised, was but seldom achieved
by any one save himself and Dante and a few
others before the end of the I4th century;
while dramatic representation of character is
almost unknown throughout the middle ages.
Thus the romancers constantly miss 'psy-
chological moments/ of which classical or
modern poets would avail themselves eagerly