NOVELS 



543 



to Sanskrit. Such collections of fables, apologues, 

 and tales, each in a setting more or less ingenious 

 of its own, ami borrowing freely from its prede- 

 rigors story-books of a class that has been made 

 familiar by ^Vte 7/w/// and One Nights were 

 very numerous at the time, and served as a mine 

 of oriental fiction to mediaeval Europe. The Gcstu 

 Romanorum, which is in fact a European story- 

 book on the oriental model, was largely indebted 

 to this source, but not nearly so much as the 

 fabliaux (properly 'fableaux,' diminutive of 

 ' fables ' ) of the trouveres, who found in the in- 

 ventions of the eastern story-tellers precisely the 

 sort of tale which their easy verse arid esprit ijaulois 

 could readily adapt to the taste of their audiences. 

 It was from the fabliaux that the Italian novellieri, 

 from Boccaccio to Bandello, and not only they, but 

 also the compilers of the Cent Xonoelles nouvelles 

 and of the Heptnmeroit, and the gay novel-writers 

 of the 16th century in general, chiefly took their 

 lightest, liveliest, most satirical, aim sometimes 

 most licentious tales ; and in this way the tiction 

 of the East came in numberless instances to be 

 incorporated in the literature of Europe. 



But the trouveres were at the same time 

 laving the foundations of another very different 

 species of novel. There were audiences for whom 

 tlie fabliaux were too light and trivial, and who 

 demanded a lay of a more serious and earnest 

 character and of deeper interest, anil for these they 

 had the c/uinxon lie geste, a sort of minor, epic, 

 dealing for the most part with the deeds or adven- 

 tures of some real or legendary hero, and standing 

 in much the same relation to the fabliaux as 

 tragedy, or at least serious drama, to light comedy 

 and farce ; and from these rlutiuon* de geste in 

 process of time, as reading liecame a more common 

 accomplishment, .and boon began to take the place 

 of the lays of the minstrels, came the prose romance 

 of rliivalry. Not, of course, that every romance of 

 chivalry had its origin in the verse of a trouvere ; 

 there is no evidence, for instance, that the story of 

 Lancelot was ever the subject of a r/imixnit <A 

 geste, though there can ! little doubt that it 

 furnished a theme for Welsh and Armorican ballads 

 lung before Walter Map took it in hand. But 

 unquestionably the early romances of chivalry were 

 as a rule made from earlier metrical romances, 

 as these again, no doubt, from shorter and ruder 

 pieces of verse; tin- pron-ss U-ing, presumably, first 

 legend or tradition, then ballads of some sort 

 einlnxlying incidents of the legend, then the isolated 

 ballads connected, unified, arid polished into a 

 rliiin.ii,n de geste, by a lm.nl of a higher order, and 

 finally the prose romance, sometimes curtailing, 

 but oftener expanding the chanson. The process 

 U well seen in the romances of the Charlemagne 

 cycle : the connecting-link lietween the legend 

 and the e/innxon has, of course, disappeared, but it 

 has left its traces plainly visible in the t'lunixnn dr. 

 L'llinul, tlie germ of the whole; and we find the 

 legend* of (lawony and the Ardennes anil of Charle- 

 magne's troubles with his foes and vassals first 

 tarnishing a subject for the trouvere, and then 

 passing into prose romances like Hiton de Bordeaux, 

 Lei Qaatre fiis A</utn, />////., and Oi/nr Ir 

 li'innin. Nor is it confined to the romances of 

 chivalry proper, of Arthur and the Round Table 

 and Charlemagne and the Peers; for the romances 

 of tin; borderland lietween chivalry and faerie, 

 Part/ienopex of Jiloi's, Tlie Kniild nf the Sn-mi, 

 Melimina (q.v.), and the liko, wore all apparently 

 sung by the trawreiM l>efore they sought readers in 



pros.-. See llOM ANTES. 



The Spanish family of romances of chivalry came 

 into the world long after the age of the trouveres, 

 though it is very likely that Amadis of Gaul, the 

 founder of it, may have mode his first appearauce 



in verse. He is mediaeval, but all his progeny, 

 which includes not merely the Amadis series, but 

 also the Palmerins and isolated romances, are of 

 modern birth, and a connecting-link between the 

 novel of the middle ages and the novel of our own 

 day. They were the products of a variety of 

 causes the taste created by the Amadis, the recent 

 invention of printing, which made such reading a 

 comparatively cheap luxury, and, above all, the 

 condition of Spain at the time. M. Chassang, in 

 the book already quoted, has a remark not wholly 

 complimentary to novelists and novel-readers, to 

 the effect that story-telling flourishes most where 

 the people are most idle. The peoples of the East 

 were, and still are, the most prolific of story-tellers, 

 liecause, living under paternal governments, they 

 have always had a surplus of time upon their 

 hands. The Greeks and Unmans did without 

 stories so long as their republics lasted, for his 

 share in the affairs of the state gave each man 

 employment enough for bis spare time and thought, 

 and it was not till Greece became subject to Koine 

 and Home to the emperors that the Greek and 

 Latin romances came into existence. This theory, 

 if we accept it, will account for the passion for 

 romances that raged in Spain in the 16th century, 

 until cured by the drastic remedy of Cervantes. 

 The end of the great national struggle with the 

 Moors, the establishment of the Inquisition, the 

 absorption of all political power and authority by 

 the sovereign, and the general stagnation in public 

 life left the upper and middle classes to a great 

 extent without occupation. Only a few could 

 follow Cortes and Pi/arro, and the majority had to 

 resign themselves to inaction, made all the more 

 irksome by the memories of a stirring past, and 

 warm their blood as best they could with the 

 imaginary adventures and sound and fury of the 

 chivalry romances. The chief charge brought by 

 every assailant of these productions, from Pedro 

 Mexia to Cervantes, is that they infected their 

 readers with their own extravagance, and made 

 them think in their style and fancy themselves 

 acting the scenes they read of. But this was 

 the great attraction ; they were indulged in, like 

 bhang or opium, for the sake of the pleasant 

 insanity that attended indulgence. Don Quixote's 

 madness, if an extreme, was not a solitary case; 

 and astute romancers, like Feliciano de Silva and 

 Marcos Marline/., knew well that the stronger they 

 made the dose the better they pleiised their readers, 

 and on principle kept them well plied with rant, 

 Iximbast, and absurdity, and fooled them to the top 

 of their lient. 



But if Cervantes purged his country of sham 

 chivalry, from the Iwrnlire of Don Quixote's books 

 --to IKHTOW the witty image of M. Demogeot 

 ' an unlucky phojnix rose up for the ennui of the 

 17th century, 'the heroic romance, Polexandre, Cleo- 

 ]Hitre, C'assnndre, Ibrahim, Clelie, and the rest. 

 Another variety of romance, however, the pastoral, 

 had some share in the genesis of the heroic romance. 

 The Spanish pastorals, supposed by some to have 

 licen the descendants of Dctphnis and C/iloe, were in 

 reality, through the Arcadia of Sannazaro, the 

 offspring of the Renaissance worship of Virgil, of 

 whieh were lrn all the pining shepherds and 

 olidiirate shepherdesses that haunt the poetry of 

 the 16th century. For a time they disputed in a 

 feeble way the ascendency of the chivalry romances, 

 and were threatened with the same fate by Cer- 

 vantes ; but they were left to live out their innocent 

 lives in peace ami die at last of their own insipidity. 

 To them, or rather to Montemayor's Diana, the 

 first and best of them, we owe one of the patriarchs 

 of the English novel, Sidney's Arcadia, and the 

 French owe Honore d'Urfe's Antrfe, the precrrsor 

 of the heroic romances. These were based partly 



