520 - 
ever, is unaffected by these erroneous as- 
sertions. It is indisputably true, that 
their prose romances, their historias de ca- 
vallerias, are neither directly nor indirect- 
ly of Arabian origin, nor in any degree 
tinged with Arabian fiction. That imti- 
mate connection which formerly subsist- 
ed between the Spaniards and Moors, 
had ceased before these romances were 
written. With respect to the origin of 
the Welsh romances, Mr. Ritson has 
shown, that Warton was equally mis- 
taken; but though he has overthrown 
his opinion, he is not possessed of suffi- 
cient data to establish his own. ‘The 
titles which he has copied from Lhuyd, 
are indeed manifestly of French extrac- 
tion; but the Mabinogion must be ex- 
amined, before any well founded opinion 
can be formed respecting Welsh romance. 
For this we must look to Mr. Owen, or 
to the very able and learned vindicator 
of the Welsh bards. 
With the same sound judgment, Mr. 
Ritson controverts and contounds Per- 
cy’s hypothesis, which would trace the 
origin of romance to Scandinavia, and 
with the same intemperance proceeds 
himself to make assertions equally 
groundless. He gives the titles of cer- 
tain sagas, transcribed chiefly between 
the years 1600 and 1700, which are evi- 
dently from the French, and infers from 
thence, that all the sagas are, for the 
most part, if not totally, translated or 
imitated from the French, and of very 
recent date. Whoever has read any 
of the earlier sagas, will perceive that 
Mr. Ritson is here venturing to decide 
upon a subject which he has never exa- 
mined. His abuse of the Edda is equally 
compounded of truth and error. That 
no such system is to be found in Saxo 
Grammaticus is certain; but what does 
Mr. Ritson say to the evidence of ‘I'ues- 
day, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and 
Saturday? Does he suppose that the 
days of the week would have been thus 
named, if our ancestors had never wor- 
shipped Tuisco, and Woden, and Thor, 
and Frea, and Surtur? Snorro, he says, 
is no bad name for a dreamer; but why 
has he omitted all notice of Semund, 
and the earlier Edda? 
A more probable origin of the machi- 
nery of romance, has been assigned in 
the preface to the late translation of Ama- 
dis. It is there surmised to be rather of 
classical than of oriental origin; that en- 
chanted armour is to be traced to the 
workshop of Vulcan; that dragons are of 
POETRY. 
the spawn of Python, and the Hydra, - 
and the guardian of the Golden Fleece; 
that Gyges furnished the prototype of 
magical rings; that the nymphs, and » 
dryads, and oreads, became fairies, and 
the naiads ladies of the lake. ‘This change 
would be analogous to the growth of 
modern languages, from the Latin, and 
to the amalgama of pagan and christian 
ceremonies. The heroes of classical anti-, 
quity, not only ranked with Roland and 
Oliver, with Sir Lancelot and Sir Tris+ 
tram, in the songs of the minstrels, but 
were installed, to their exclusion, in the 
most noble order of the nine worthies. 
—Jason, Hercules, Orpheus, were all 
adopted by the romancers; and the same 
deep interest was excited in the darkest 
ages, by the tale of Troy divine, as that 
divinest tale will continue to excite, while 
the nature of man remains unchanged. 
The Troy boke well exemplifies the easy 
process whereby gods and demigods be- 
came knights of prowess. (We want a 
word for the preux of the French, the un- 
translatable adjective that condenses all 
the virtues of chivalry.) !n this book Ju- 
piter is humanised ; the addition of cour- 
tesy makes Hercules a true errant knight; 
and the story of his descent to hell, to 
deliver Theseus, is made so probable, by 
being “translated into romance, that it 
may almost be admitted as an historical 
solution of mythological fable. 
«« If the hero of a romance be occasionally 
borrow’d from heayen, he is, as*often, sent 
thither in return. John of Damaseus, who 
fabricateéd a pious romance of Barlaam and 
Josaplat, in the eighth century, was the cause 
of these creations of his fancyful bigotry, and 
interested superstition, being place’d in_ the 
empyreal galaxy, and worship’d as saints. 
Even Rowland and Oliver, the forge’d and 
fabulous existenceés of the Pseudo-Turpin, 
or some other monkish or priestly impostour, 
have attain’d the same honour. This idea ts 
reader'd the more plausible, if not positive, 
by the most ancient romanceés of chivalry, 
those of Charlemagne, for instance, and his 
paladins, Arthur, and his: knights of the 
round-table, Guy, Bevis, and so forth; all of 
whom are the strenuous and successful cham- 
pions of christianity, and mortal enemys of 
the Saragens, whom they, voluntaryly and 
wantonly, invade, attack, persecute, slaugh- 
ter and destroy. It was not, therefor, with- 
out reason, say’d by whomsoever, that the 
first romanceés were compose’d to promote 
the crusades, dureing which period, it is cer- 
tain, they were the most numerous: and to — 
prove how radically these mischievous and 
sanguinary legends were impress’d ge the 
minds of a bigoted and idiotick people for 2 
series of no less than five centurys, about the 
