Foy the Monthly Magazine. 
Tue ENQUIRER, No. XIX. 
WHERE IS THE PATRIA OF ROMANCE, 
OF RIME, AND OF CHIVALRY? 
An gwiranath ew an gwella 
En pob tra trea po pella. 
254 truth is beft in every thing, near or far. 
ARMORICAN PROVERBS. 
SHE neft of romantic fiction, the frit 
ufe of rime, and the inftitution of 
chivalry, are of uncertain locality ; fo that 
the. pedigree is ftill to feek of circum- 
fiances which have given to the manners 
of our hetoic ages, and to the compofitions 
of our popular poets, their moft peculiar 
tinge. Different theories have indeed been 
offerei of their probable origin: two 
fyltems efpecially, which may be charac- 
' terifed as the Arabic and the Gothic, have 
attracted the toils of microfcopic erudition, 
and divide the votes of literary f{pecu- 
lators. 
That fcheme of opinion which aims at 
deducing t romance, rime, and knighthood, 
from the Arabs, originates probably with 
Vedic? who, in a hiftory of the poetry 
of Spain, naturally afcribes to the Moorifh 
ponqucit many peculiarities of Spanifhcul- 
ture. Warburton (Final note to Love’s 
Labour loft): and Warton (Firft Differta- 
tion prefixed to the Hiftory of Englifh Po- 
etry) favour more or lefs this hypothefs, 
which makes Spain the birth-place of mo- 
dern civilization, and fucceffively the 
{chool miftrefs of the Provenzal and Ita- 
Jian, of the Norman -and Englifh poets. 
According to thefé writers, the Douazdeh 
Rokh, or twelve champions of Kai Khofrou, 
would be the archetypes of -the peers of 
Charlemayne ; the mori/cos, of our ballads ; 
and the fiefias de las canas, of our tourna- 
ments, 
Mallet, by his Introdugétion to the 
Hiftory of Denmark, fuggefted the trains of 
idea which led probably Pinkerton (Dif- 
fertation on the Scythians or Goths, 
p- 135), and certainly Percy (on the an- 
cient Metrical Romances), to afcribe-a 
Scandinavian crigin to. the talesandrites of 
chivalry, According to thefe writers, the 
raodel ce romance mutt be fought in the 
Hiftery of Charles and Grymer, the firft- 
lings of rime in Egil the Skald, and the ru- 
dimen: 3 of knighthood i in the Edda. 
Various conlilerations, however, favour 
the fulpicion that neither Moorifh Spain, 
nor Gothic Scandinavia, gave this very de- 
cifive impulfe to the charaéter of early mo- 
dern civilization; but Armorica rather, and 
the connecied provinces of Britain. 
The Engutrer. 
[ Feb. Ty Z, 
I. All the European nations take their 
romances of chivalry from the French. 
The Italians have no * vernacular poetry 
prior to the fourteenth century : the earlieft_ 
of their writers in’ + verfe or } profe, 
ahound with imitations from the Proven- 
zal: Ariofto derives from Turpin, and 
Taffo from § Bechada, the fubje& of his 
poem. ‘The Spaniards enumerate, among 
their earlieft || poets, thofe invited out of 
the fouth of France to Barcelona by King 
John the Firft of Atragon. Accordin 
to Cervantes, they have no older book of 
chivalry to exhibit than Amadis of Gaul, 
which is apparently a tranflation from the 
then manutcript French original : at any 
rate its circulation cannot be traced before 
the invention of printing, and it is confe- 
quently pofterior, by many centuries, to the 
firft French romances. ‘The Englifh pof- 
fefs few compofitions of this fort, which 
are not avowedly q tranflated from Nor- 
man originals : and this is the cafe of the 
three ** “oldeft, the Gefte of King Horne, 
the Sangrale, md the Lives of the Saints. 
The German romancers again, as Adelung 
and ++ Eichhorn have proved, borrow 
from the French their firft effays: Ulrich 
of Zezam, who flourifhed in 1190, 

* Petrarch, indeed, mentions in his Tri-. 
umph of Love 
i Siciliani 
Che fur’ gid primi——— 
But thefe feem to be Provenzal poets migrated 

“to Sicily. 
+ See efpecially La Crufca Provenzale of 
Ant. Baftero, Rome 1724. 
t¢ Brunetto Latini, the mafter of Dante, 
*¢ i] quale, ficcome teftimonia G. Villani, fu 
cominciatore, e maeftro in digroflare i Fioren- 
tini, e farli {corti in ben parlare ed in faper 
giudicare, piuttofto che adoperare il patrio fuo 
linguaggio nella grand’ opera delTeforo, volle 
‘anzi fcriverla in lingua Romanza, o Proven- 
zale, come quella che era in quel tempo te- 
nuta per pit Sg i e piu -nobile del’ Itali- 
ana.” Vicende della Letteratura, p. 75. 
§ ‘¢Gregorius, cognomento Bechada, de 
Caitro de Turribus, profeffione miles, fubti- 
lifimi ingenii vir, aliquantulum imbutus 
literis, horum gefta preliorum (the taking of 
Jerufalem by Godfrey) materna, ut ita 
dixerim, lingua thythmo vulgari, ut populus . 
pleniter intelligeret, ingens volumen decenter 
compofuit. 2 Labbe Biblioth. nov. Il. p. 296. 
This Bechada of Tours was affifted by Gau- 
bert, 2 Norman. 
|| Dillon’s Origin of Spat Peete Pp. 54. 
€ Percy’s Reliques, III. p. xxi. 
** Warton’s Hiftory of Englith Poetry, 
I. 13,-38, and 1343 and Tyrwhitt’s Effays on 
Chaucer, HI. 68, and 164. 
Tt-Gefchichte der Cultur, p. 224. 
re tran{s 
