ROMANCE. 



875 



of the Nibelungen-lied, in place of the original heathen 

 IK-rmanns, &c. among the Germans. 



Another, and scarcely perhaps a less powerful cause, 

 mu>t h.ivi- operated in two at least of the cases we have 

 rHVrrrtl to. The tribes who made conquests in those 

 days were always far ruder in manners, and of course 

 in language, than those who were obliged to submit to 

 tin it arms. Such conquerors in all cases soon borrow 

 from the civilization of those whom they have subdued. 

 The Saxon pirates, and subsequently the old Norman 

 sea-kings, must have felt themselves to be savages in 

 comparison with those whom they deprived of the soil 

 of England, a country which had for centuries par- 

 taken in the light of Roman cultivation. The Nor- 

 mans, when they invaded Neustria, to which they af- 

 terwards gave their name, must have felt the same 

 thing in a still more serious degree ; or, at all events, 

 the feeling must have operated still more strongly with 

 them, since they were led to adopt so much more of 

 the language of their new vassals. This must have fa- 

 cilitated to a great extent the adoption of the more po- 

 lished and adorned legends which these rude warriors 

 found in possession of the conquered soil. 



There is indeed one exception, which we ought per- 

 haps to have mentioned ere now ; we mean that which 

 is to be found in the existence of certain real old hea- 

 then legends in the literature of Scandinavia. The re- 

 mains of these, preserved in some of the Eddas, are no 

 doubt extremely valuable, not only on account of the 

 high poetical merit which they exhibit, but still more 

 of the light they throw on the ancient life of kindred 

 nations, the history of whose manners we can scarcely 

 trace to any extent worth mentioning beyond the pe- 

 riod of their Christianization. The existence of these 

 relics now, is however to be accounted for, only by re- 

 membering that Scandinavia was not Christianized un- 

 til at a comparatively recent period, and through the 

 agency of missionaries refined enough to take some 

 interest in the preservation of the original traditions of 

 the soil merely as matters of curiosity. Even in those 

 regions, it may be added, the legends of Arthur and 

 Charlemagne soon supplanted, generally speaking, the 

 old heathen legends ; and as, at all events, these have not 

 exerted any discernible direct influence over the liter- 

 ature of modern Europe, however different may have 

 been the case in regard to the kindred productions im- 

 ported from the north at an earlier period, it may per- 

 haps be considered as sufficient, that we have chosen to 

 consider them as, after all, forming only an exception to 

 a rule. The use which has recently been made of these 

 materials by some ingenious persons in Germany, can- 

 not deserve to be particularly commented on. That is the 

 work of an age, in which literature is nothing but an ex- 

 quisite art, in which the fancy is satiated with imitations 

 of all sorts of legends, without the popular feeling being 

 deeply worked upon by any of them. La Motte Fouque 

 and his brethren treat Scandinavia exactly as the au- 

 thors of our own Thalabas and Kehamas do Arabia and 

 India. Indeed, in spite of all their pretences, the Scan- 

 dinavian inspiration of the modern Danish and Swe- 

 dish tragedians and romancers, such as Ingelmann and 

 Oehlenschlieger, is universally felt to be entirely of the 

 same artificial and ineffectual character. 



Considering the great length at which every the mi- 

 nutest item of the present subject has been discussed 

 in separate treatises by authors of the greatest research, 

 ingenuity, and taste, we should certainly involve our- 

 selves in an attempt alike useless as presumptuous, if 

 we pretended to exhaust any part of it here ; or indeed. 



if we pretended to any thing beyond sketching, for the Bomtme. 

 use of those who have not as yet entered on this wide ^^V 1 ' 

 field of study, some of the main topics to which they 

 ought to direct their attention. We shall endeavour to 

 do the little we pretend to with as much brevity as u 

 possible. 



All critical antiquaries, then, are at one as to the Coatromty 

 opinion of which we have been speaking above, viz. **toihreU- 

 that the romantic literature was in its origin historical, 

 and we believe they all concur in lamenting the faci- 

 lity with which those into whose hands it fell, soon 

 suffered its original character and purpose to escape 

 them. While this, however, is admitted on every 

 hand, a world of controversies have sprung up both as 

 to the question whence the historical materials, and as 

 to that whence the mythological ornaments of the ear- 

 liest romance-makers, with whose own works we have 

 any acquaintance, were derived. One contends, that 

 the legends of European romance were derived from, 

 the scalds of the north. Another maintains as unrival- 

 led and alone the pretensions of the British bards. A 

 third is of opinion, that although our ancestors might 

 have possessed from a much earlier period a few rude 

 strains and bloody stories of their own, yet for the whole 

 array of fancy, the whole ornaments of pleasing wonder, 

 the whole soul and spirit, in short, of what we now talk 

 of as the old Gothic romance for every thing that long 

 made that popular, and still entitles it to be remem- 

 bered our Gothic forefathers were entirely indebted 

 to that collision with the arts of the east, which at- 

 tended their collision with eastern arms at the period 

 of the Crusades. A fourth party, finally, attribute a 

 similar exclusive influence to the knowledge of the 

 works of the ancients, which was spread abroad among 

 the Gothic nations about the same time, and in part at 

 least in consequence of the same causes. 



It appears to us, and we believe most impartial judges The older 

 are now of the same way of thinking, that there is a theories i* 

 great portion of truth in the essays by which each of "ronecm. 

 these hypotheses has been asserted and enforced, and bec * uf f too 

 that the fault of each of the theories lies in its being too n 

 narrow and exclusive. We well know that there were 

 bards among the Celtic, scalds among the Gothic, and 

 story-tellers by profession among the oriental people, as 

 far back as any history reaches them. We know that 

 in consequence, first of Teutonic, then of Roman, and 

 then again of a long series of Teutonic invasions, the 

 population of the western countries of Europe had early 

 acquired a very mixed character. We know that, in 

 every instance, the conquerors and the conquered peo- 

 ple must to a certain extent have mingled ; and in the 

 names of places, in the assumption of customs, and in 

 the whole composition of language, we have perfect 

 evidence that this mixture took place, in most instances, 

 to an extent totally irreconcileable with the reveries in 

 which some writers indulge, as to the purity of any of 

 the races of man now existing in western Europe. We, 

 therefore, cannot see any difficulty whatever in believ- 

 ing, that the descendants of the poets described by Ta- 

 citus in his work on Germany, and those of the poets 

 found by Julius Caesar in Britain and Celtic France, 

 should have commenced an interchange of their respec- 

 tive legendary treasures soon, and carried it on until it 

 might be a matter of no small difficulty for themselves 

 to decide, whether any one given fact or fable was in its 

 origin the property of the one race of people or of the 

 other. In like manner we know, that the romantic lite- 

 rature of western Europe had not certainly gained any 

 thing like the shape under which alone we are acquainted 



