394 ROMANCES. 



Iceland. These translations and imitations, which preserved the generic 

 name of romance, were, however, fashioned to suit the taste of the nation for 

 which they were intended, though they still retained the characteristics of 

 their place of birth. In Italy there was composed only one prose romance 

 after the manner of the French romances of the twelfth and thirteenth 

 centuries ; but from this crude compilation, which was called " Reali di 

 Francia," there issued a great number of long poems on chivalry " Rinaldo," 

 " Morgante," " Orlando," " Guarino," &c. upon which the Italian genius 

 lavished all the wealth of its poetry to disguise the extravagant and affected 

 sentiments which it attributed somewhat too freely to the rude paladins of 

 Charlemagne, and to the Christian warriors who took part in the Crusades. 

 Spain, whose heroic traditions were carefully preserved in the romances of 

 the Campeador Cid, showed little liking for the peers of Charlemagne ; but 

 she took more kindly to the Breton romances about the Knights of the Round 

 Table, and from them derived her inspirations for the composition of a 

 romance similar in characteristics, which soon obtained a reputation equal to, 

 if not greater than, that of the French works. This romance, " Amadis do 

 Gaule," which Portugal has always claimed the possession of from Spain, 

 was composed, or at all events begun, in the first years of the sixteenth century 

 by an anonymous author, who wrote only the first four books of it. The 

 writers who took up the work where he left it, and whose names are also 

 unknown, added to these four books the stories of Esplandian, of Florisande, 

 of Catane, and of the Knight of the Burning Sword. The success of 

 " Amadis " was even greater in France and Italy than it was in Spain, and 

 the French translation of Nicholas de Herberay, Sieur des Essars, shone like 

 a beacon light above all the romantic compositions of the sixteenth century, 

 during which the Spaniards published many romances of chivalry "Primaleon 

 of Greece," " Gerileon of England," &c. all of which were cast into the shade 

 by the masterpiece of Cervantes. The English and the Dutch continued to 

 read the translations of the old French romances, but they did not attempt 

 to imitate them, and the first national romance in England was Sidney's 

 "Arcadia," published in 1591, and continued by his sister, the Countess of 

 Pembroke. The Germanic nations, which had also translated a great number 

 of the old French romances, were even less successful than the English 

 in this branch of literature, and the few national and historical romances 

 which they published in the sixteenth century only served to manifest their 



