ROMANCE. 



events, or with national feeling*, but with the exploits 

 and adventures of individual knights. This was an 

 important step in the history of romantic fiction. It 

 marks the transition to another state of society. The 

 great collisions between peoples of different races con- 

 tending for country and faith had passed over ; and 

 romance, following the stream, betook herself to the 

 influence of the spirit of chivalry upon private knights 

 their wild and wavering adventures their restless 

 i ... their tournaments, duels, and other mockeries of 



war. 



Another species of fictitious writing sprung up also 

 in Spain, under the name of the pastoral romance. 

 George de Montemayor, a man of great talents, first 

 gave vogue to this kind of writing by his Diana, a 

 work which was long most extensively popular, and 

 from an episode in which, Shakespeare has taken the 

 story of his Tito Gentlemen of Verona. Cervantes 

 laughed at the absurdities of Montemayor's disciples; 

 but his own first romance, the Galatea, was after all a 

 production of the very same school. The wearisome 

 languors of the Arcadian existence depicted in the 

 works of this brood, their piping sentimental shepherds, 

 and crook-bearing heroines, their Jade and unmanly 

 tone, were radical and ineradicable absurdities, and 

 not even the names of Montemayor, Cervantes, and 

 our own Sir Philip Sidney, have been able to keep 

 their p-oductions of this class from total neglect all 

 but total oblivion. 



We may dispatch in as few words the heroic ro- 

 mance as it was called of the seventeenth century. 

 This was begun by Honore D'Urf'e, a fantastic cha- 

 racter, who wished to shadow out some adventures of 

 his own family under a stately disguise of remote 

 manners. He was much obliged to the unreadable 

 love romances of the later Greeks, but on the whole 

 his colouring is the reflection of the romance of chi- 

 valry. He was followed by Madame Scuderi and other 

 writers of considerable talent, who in vain endeavoured 

 to give life to a species of composition radically ab- 

 surd. Nevertheless the melancholy mataphysics of 

 this school of amorous fiction, its ridiculously over- 

 strained sentimentality, its pompous affectations of all 

 sorts, found favour for a time ; the enormous folios in 

 which these follies were embodied, continued to infest 

 the taste of the reading public until the nature and 

 sense of the modern novel appeared, and gave them 

 the coup-de-grace. 



But before we enter upon the consideration of the 

 existing literature of romance, we must say a few 

 words in regard to some other elements which were 

 mingled in its original formation with the general form 

 (however improved and refined) and with not a little 

 also of the spirit of the genuine old European romance. 

 All down through the ages in which those old ro- 

 mances were composed and admired, there was another 

 and a totally distinct species of fictitious narrative in 

 which our ancestors found sources of amusement and 

 delight, generally speaking, of a lighter and more 

 comic character. It is not easy to say what were ori- 

 ginally the precise limits of the proper Roman, the 

 fabliau, and the lai. By many critics of great name it 

 is supposed that lai was originally the name given to 

 compositions in verse borrowed by the Romans from 

 the people of Bretagne in other words, of Celtic ori- 

 gin ; and they go on to state their opinion that the 



379 



ItdHuin differed from the Fa'iHau only in Ix-ing Romance, 

 of greater length, and turning oa incident* of a more *"~V**" 

 serious cart. We have no room for discussing these 

 controversies here, but it is certain that the Norman 

 Trouveurs had a body of light ludicrous poetry from a 

 very early period, and that, whatever hands the fic- 

 tions of this class may have passed through, they may 

 in far the greatest proportion be traced to an oriental 

 original. The collection of tales by Petrus Alphonsus, 

 the collection entitled Gexla Homanorum, the famous 

 legend of the Seven Witt Mattert, were obviomly a- 

 mong the readiest and mr^t used sources whence the 

 trouveurs took their materials, and a very great part 

 of these materials has been already traced to the 

 ancient literature of Persia, and the yet more ancient 

 literature of India. 



The corresponding class of men in southern France, Boccaccio, 

 the troubadours, produced but few fabliaux ; they be- * tc - 

 took themselves almost exclusively to the poetry of 

 sentimental and metaphysical love. Each of these 

 classes of poets have produced a powerful influence on 

 European literature, but their influence has not been 

 equally acknowledged by those indebted to them. 

 Petrarch and Dante gloried in confessing their obliga- 

 tions to the troubadour poets of Langaedoc and Pro- 

 vence ; but Boccaccio and his followers, the classical 

 novelists of Italy, have preserved silence as to their 

 not inferior obligations to the fictions of the trouveurt. 

 The apologues, merry tales, satirical anecdotes, witty 

 turns, comic satires, and ludicrous love-stories of the 

 FabJiaux, were transformed into the elegant novelli of 

 the old Florentines. From them they passed into 

 European literature at large, under a shape of refine- 

 ment which secured them lasting popularity ; and, in 

 a word, it is not quite easy to say whether the drama 

 and romance of Spain and of England be more in- 

 debted to the Italian novelists for humorous inci- 

 dents, or to the old romance of the middle ages for 

 elements of a higher description. 



Cervantes was the great genius for whom it was re- Cernnte*. 

 served to mould out of the admixture of these various 

 elements of fiction, that species of composition, the 

 possession of which may be said to form one of the 

 chief distinctions of modern literature in general as 

 compared with the literature of classical antiquity. 

 He tried them separately ere he hit upon the happy 

 idea which has immortalized him. He imitated the 

 tales of Boccaccio and the Diana of Montemayor, and 

 he at one time certainly had entertained thoughts of 

 writing a serious imitation of Amadis.* But Don 

 Quixote was the felicitous conception destined to form 

 a new era in European letters. 



The Spaniards had, before this work appeared, di- 

 vided their favour between the brood of Araadis on 

 the one hand, and on the other comic satirical tales, 

 formed no doubt from the Italian novels, but composed 

 at greater length, turning almost exclusively on the 

 tricks of cheats, sharpers, and vagrants the tales of 

 what they called the gusto joMcarwco of which Laza- 

 rillo de Tonnes, and Guzman D'Alfarache are the 

 best, and the best known. In these works the base 

 side of nature was caricatured as exclusively as the 

 lofty one was exaggerated in the proper romances. 

 Cervantes conceived a plan by which he was enabled 

 to unite all the best elements of both, and to give both 

 the benefit of being illustrated by the power of con- 



This is certainly the fact, if the Canon of Toledo in Don Quixote be intended, as few can doubt he if, to speak the critical sentiment* 

 of Cerrantes himself. 



