376 



ROMANCE. 



Komar.ce. w jth it, and therefore entitled to speak decidedly about 



/"""' it, until in or about the period of the Crusades ; and 



therefore, recognising, as we cannot fail to do, the ex- 

 traordinary resemblance between many of the rrost 

 striking features of that literature, and many of the 

 most striking features of the fiction of the ' unchang- 

 ing east," we cannot hesitate about admitting the ex- 

 treme probability, that the minstrels who accompanied 

 the armies of the Prankish princes into the east, bor- 

 rowed ornaments for their own use among the people 

 with whom these journey ings carried them into immedi- 

 ate and intimate contact. We conceive, on the contrary, 

 that in the absence of all distinct and positive proof 

 which, from the character of these uncritical times is 

 of course the case here it would be the extreme of 

 imbecility to regret the views which, supported by all 

 reason and likelihood, are, to say the least of it, uncon- 

 tradicted by any authority worthy of being opposed for 

 a single moment to these. And we take exactly the 

 same view of the matter in regard to the fourth or clas- 

 sical hypothesis above stated. Our ancestors were de- 

 scended from the same original stock with the Greeks. 

 In their mythology, and in the more elaborate mytho- 

 logy of the Greeks, there were a thousand essential 

 points of radical resemblance. What more natural, 

 than that the ruder people should be glad to engraft 

 .upon their own fables the beautiful ornaments of fancy, 

 which they found interwoven with fables originally 

 not of an incongruous character ? What more natural, 

 than that they who unquestionably had witches and 

 charms, and giants enough of their own, should borrow 

 eagerly from those storehouses of classical fiction, in 

 which all the arts of poetry had been lavished on the 

 spells of Circe, the incantations of Medea, the impene- 

 trable armour of Vulcan's forge, and the exploits of 

 Polyphemus and his brethren ? 



Formed out of the mixture of these several kinds of 

 materials, .we have, in our European literature, three 

 distinct bodies of romantic writing ; and the most an- 

 cient of these appears from internal evidence to be 

 that of the Germans. We say from internal evidence, 

 and by this we mean not so much the internal evidence 

 of style and language ,as that of thought and concep- 

 tion. In early times, compositions of this class were 

 handed down orally from one generation to another, 

 and of course the mere language of them was perpe- 

 tually undergoing alterations. But one strong, circum- 

 stance cannot be overlooked, and indeed appears to us to 

 be conclusive. In all the existing romances of Arthur 

 and of Charlemagne, we have the clearest traces of that 

 peculiar spirit of religious chivalry which was first ex- 

 cited in western Europe in the period of the Crusades. 

 In the Nibelungen-lied we have nothing whatever of 

 this. The poem therefore may, as it now stands, have 

 been the work of an age posterior to the first crusades ; 

 in all probability it was so by at least a hundred years ; 

 but the person or persons who gave to these legends 

 their present form and dress, must have carefully fol- 

 lowed more ancient editions of them, otherwise it seems 

 impossible that we should be able to discover in them 

 nothing of the anti-Saracen ardour, nothing of the idea 

 of a chivalry formed and preserved for purposes not 

 political and military only, but religious ; nothing, in 

 short, of that peculiar spirit which animates the far 

 greater portion of the Norman romances connected with 

 the traditions of Charlemagne and Arthur. Besides, 

 the superior antiquity of the Nibelungen-lied legends 

 is equally attested by the far less formal manner in 

 .which the institution itself of chivalry is brought for- 



niati ro- 

 mance. 



ward. We have no trace of the solemn institutions 

 and brotherhoods by which chivalry was distinguished *" ~~v" " 

 in its perfect state; and we know enough of all the ro- 

 mance writers to be quite certain, that they, under 

 whatever colouring of distance, aimed at, or at least 

 indulged in, nothing so much as the delineation of the 

 actual manners of their own period. 



We have both heathens and Christians in these le- 

 gends ; but the heathens are genuine worshippers of 

 Odin not of Mahomet, and the Christians are repre- 

 sented as living in peace with them, beneath the tole- 

 rating sway of Attila the Hun! A great deal of the 

 pure old Scandinavian tone is preserved in the man- 

 ners of the heroes, and in the tone of the narrative. A 

 peculiarly dark and solemn character of melancholy 

 pervades the whole spirit of the work. Devotion and 

 daring are carried to their utmost height ; and a rude 

 and imperfect idea of the Christian doctrines appears 

 to struggle throughout with elements of a very different 

 description, softening rather than expelling the stern 

 and iron gloom of the black and bloody creed of Scan- 

 dinavian mythology. It is impossible for us to bestow 

 more time on this singular relic of antiquity here ; but 

 we regret this the less, as we see a translation of it into 

 the English language announced as nearly ready for 

 publication. 



The Heldenbitch, or Book of Heroes, which is com- 

 monly esteemed as the second great storehouse of thia 

 old German romance, is a compilation of very incon- 

 gruous materials. Many of the pieces contained in it 

 approach very closely the tone of the Nibelungen-lied, 

 but others are obviously the productions of a later pe- 

 riod, as they abound in allusions to the very things, the 

 absence of all mention of which in the older collection 

 has been already commented on. We refer our readers 

 to the editions of these works, published by Miiller, 

 Grimm, and Haagen, and to the comments on them 

 scattered over the works of Herder and the Schlegels. 



The other two great bodies, however, of romance Romance o( 

 those which may be generally designated by the names Arthur and 

 of Arthur and Charlemagne are the only ones which Charle- 

 may be said to have possessed a really European cha- ma S ne - 

 racter and influence. It is by no means easy to decide 

 which of these ought to be considered as the more an- 

 cient. The historical Arthur belonged to an age far 

 remoter than that of the son of Pepin ; and it can 

 scarcely be doubted that the people of his own race 

 had founded romantic narratives on his adventures al- 

 most in his own time. But the romances concerning 

 him and his heroes which we now possess, were all, it 

 is obvious, the productions of a much more recent 

 time. They are all, in a word, distinguished by the 

 vividness with which the rr.anners of the most perfect 

 .age of chivalry are represented in them. Nay, many 

 critics have gone so far as to decide against them the 

 question, as to their relative antiquity and that of 

 the romances of the Charlemagne body, upon this 

 ground only, that, as the}' allege, the spirit of chivalry 

 appears in them under a purer and more idealized form 

 than in the others. Such in particular is the opinion 

 of the great German critic, Schlegel. 



This controversy has not yet been terminated, nor An-lo- 

 do we consider it as one of any sort of importance. Norman 

 We now know very well, that both of these bodies of romance*, 

 romantic fiction were arrayed in the dress which is to 

 us their earliest, among the same nation, and in or about 

 the same period. The sagacious guess of the Count 

 de Tressan has been converted into all but certainty 

 by the accurate researches of the Abbe dela Rue ; and 



