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 THE SPRINGS OF ROMANCE IN 
 THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE 
 
 GEORGE WYNDHAM 
 
 LONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED 
 
 PRICE Is. net 
 
RONSARD AND LA PLJ^IADE 
 
 With Selections from 
 
 their Poetry and some 
 
 Translations in the 
 
 Original Metres 
 
 By GEORGE WYNDHAM 
 Extra Crown 8vo. Ss. net. 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. LTD., LONDON 
 
THE SPRINGS OF ROMANCE 
 
 IN THE 
 
 LITERATURE OF EUROPE 
 
 An Address delivered to the Students 
 
 of the University of Edinburgh 
 
 October 1910 
 
 BY THE RIGHT HON. 
 
 GEORGE WYNDHAM, M.P. 
 
 LORD RECTOR OF THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 MAGMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED 
 
 ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 
 
 1910 
 
PRINTED AT THE EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 T. AND A. CONSTABLE, PRINTERS TO HIS MAJESTY 
 
TO 
 
 WILLIAM PATON KER 
 
 ^^ 
 
 10 
 
 1 
 
 -7 >. 
 
 1 '■ 
 
 iV!6Ci)51 
 
*' // is not the contexture of words but the effects of action 
 that gives glory to the times. . . ." 
 
 " // is but the clouds gathered about our owne judgement that 
 makes us think all other ages wrapt up in mistes, and the great 
 distance betwixt us^ that causes us to imagine men so farre off to 
 bee so little in respect of ourselves. . . ." 
 
 " // is not bookes but onely that great booke of the world 
 and the all-over-spreading grace of heaven that makes men 
 truly judicial. . . ." 
 
 S. Daniel, Defence of Rhime^ 1603. 
 
THE SPRINGS OF ROMANCE IN 
 THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen, ( >V', ' \'i\''<W''' 
 
 It was not easy to choose a theme for an 
 address to Edinburgh University. Your unbounded 
 behef in Rectorial discretion permits a latitude that 
 is almost embarrassing. For guidance I had nothing 
 but a sense of my own limitations and a prospect of 
 the scene that confronts me. These suggested a 
 search over the vast province of learning for some 
 plot, not wholly unexplored by your Rector, that 
 should also be linked with the fame of your ancient 
 city. The world allows, and Scott's monument 
 attests, that, from Edinburgh, and by his genius, 
 " impulse and area " were added to the great move- 
 
8 THE SPRINGS OF ROMANCE IN 
 
 merit of the last century which we call the Romantic 
 Revival. That movement changed the literature, 
 architecture, painting, and furniture of Europe, and 
 reversed the attitude of scholarship towards the 
 Middle Ages ; a fact of world-wide importance : 
 
 incidental] V it renewed the bond between Scotland 
 
 -J 
 
 and Fiance ; a fact of peculiar interest to the capital 
 of your country. It so happens that, long before I 
 ever dreamed of the honour you have conferred, 
 the phrase — Romantic Revival — made me wonder, 
 what was revived. " What," I asked myself, " is 
 Romance ? " Unable to answer, I turned to another 
 question — " When did Romance first come into the 
 literature of Europe ? " — and spent some time in 
 pursuit of so elusive a quarry. My choice of a 
 theme was decided by Edinburgh's connection with 
 the revival of Romance, and my guesses at its origin. 
 I must speak of Romance. 
 
 Some may feel that a definition of Romance 
 
THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE 9 
 
 should precede any survey of its inception and 
 character. I respectfully demur. A definition of 
 Romance would be easy if there were general agree- 
 ment on the meaning of the word. Unfortunately 
 there is not. Most people if asked, '' What is 
 Romance ? " would answer, as Augustine did of 
 Time, " I know when you do not ask me." When 
 dealing with the dimly apprehended we must dis- 
 cover before we can define. Columbus had no 
 map of America. 
 
 One way of discovery would be to select an 
 example of obvious, though undefined, Romance, 
 and then to analyse its contents. But that plan if 
 applied, for instance, to Ariosto's Orlando Furioso 
 will be found to lead away fi-om definition rather 
 than towards it. Analysis of extreme romantic types 
 yields a jumble of mythologies, refi-acted through 
 several layers of history, all more or less distorted 
 and opaque. There is plenty of fighting and love- 
 
lo THE SPRINGS OF ROMANCE IN 
 
 making, a good deal of scenery and weather ; and, 
 apart from human interest, there are troops of 
 animals and some strange inhuman forces masquer- 
 ading as giants and dragons and warlocks. From 
 such confusion a definition does not readily emerge. 
 A better way of discovery is called, I believe — 
 rather pompously — the historic method. It amounts 
 to this. If you can establish When and Where a 
 thing happened you may be able to guess Why it 
 happened and, even. What it was. Let us, then, post- 
 pone analysis of Romance, and set out by weighing 
 the question with which the Cardinal of Este greeted 
 Ariosto's presentation of his masterpiece. (1510.) 
 The prelate asked the poet, " quite simply," " where 
 he had been for all that rot." That is what I shall 
 try to discover. If we begin by detecting when, 
 and where, Romance first appeared in Europe we 
 may be able to say why it appeared, and even to 
 hazard a surmise at its nature. But the last is a 
 
THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE ii 
 
 fearsome enterprise, trenching on metaphysics, as 
 the way is with all inquiry if you push it any 
 distance. I shall seek in the main for origins, and 
 call my address " The Springs of Romance in the 
 Literature of Europe." 
 
 You can look for the advent of Romance either 
 in literature that remains and can be studied ; or 
 else, in the theories of learned men who infer the 
 pre-existence of earlier literature, that has certainly 
 perished, and may never have been written. They 
 cite the songs in which, Tacitus tells us, the 
 Germans extolled the founders of their race ; or 
 the didactic poetry of the Druids, which the 
 Druids were forbidden to write ; or they point in 
 later versions to a barbarous handling of stories 
 treated with relative urbanity in earlier versions, 
 and infer from the discrepancy a common origin for 
 both of a more primitive character than either reveals. 
 These deductions from contemporary references to 
 
12 THE SPRINGS OF ROMANCE IN 
 
 songs that are lost, and from antique touches in 
 later documents, are always ingenious and often 
 delightful. But they present two difficulties. In 
 the first place, hypothetical literature affiDrds a 
 foundation too insecure for the erection of theory 
 that must itself partake of conjecture. In the 
 second place, it is by no means certain that barbarous 
 legends are romantic to the races who invent them. 
 I shall return to that view before I conclude. At 
 the outset I must look for the advent of Romance 
 in writings that still form part of the literature of 
 Europe. 
 
 The Advent of Romance 
 
 Keeping, then, to literature that remains, I ad- 
 vance the disputable proposition that the writings 
 preserved from Greece and Rome are not romantic ; 
 briefly, that the classics are not romantic. If time 
 permitted I could, I think, sustain that thesis, with 
 
THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE 13 
 
 qualifications, of course, and concessions to any 
 who disputed its truth. I would readily admit that 
 the Greeks were more romantic than the Romans. 
 I would certainly concede Nausicaa in the Odyssey 
 and Medea in the Argonauts-^ Dido and Camilla 
 in the ^neid. But, excepting Virgil, whose 
 peculiar romantic note caught the ear of the 
 Middle Ages, I should point out that my conces- 
 sions were mainly in respect of the earliest and 
 latest poems of the Classic world, and that, in- 
 cluding even the ^neid^ all such touches of 
 romance as do faintly transfigure the classics are 
 to be found in stories of wandering through strange 
 lands, and of encounters with alien customs and 
 superstitions. I would give my " heckler " the 
 Golden Ass of Apuleius, and cut the argument 
 short by taking refuge in the considered opinion 
 of Professor W. P. Ker. He writes [The Dark 
 Ages^ p. 41): "Classical literature perished from 
 
14 THE SPRINGS OF ROMANCE IN 
 
 a number of contributary ailments, but of these 
 none was more desperate than the want of Romance 
 in the Roman Empire, and especially in the Latin 
 language." 
 
 The Latin world of the fifth century was un- 
 romantic, and notably so in northern Gaul, the 
 most Roman, because the least invaded, province 
 of the Western Empire. Latinised Gauls led 
 an ordered existence of unchallenged convention, 
 revolving round garrisons, townhalls, and schools. 
 Their life was military and municipal ; their 
 literature, an affair of grammar and rhetoric, 
 written in classical Latin which had diverged from 
 vulgar Latin, so widely as to be unintelligible to 
 all but the learned. From the people's Latin, 
 spoken throughout the country, almost every trace 
 of Celtic words and Celtic beliefs had been elimi- 
 nated. We possess nothing that can be called 
 Romance in either of these languages. Yet Latin 
 
THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE 15 
 
 Gaul was to be the nursery-garden of the first 
 seedHng of romantic literature, and that earliest 
 growth was not to flourish until it had been trans- 
 planted. When, then, and where, does Romance 
 arrive in European literature ? The answer to the 
 first question is not before the second half of the 
 eleventh century, and, to the second, probably in 
 Great Britain. The first piece of obvious Romance 
 in literature that remains is the " Song of Roland," 
 as we have it in the Oxford MS. (Bodleian, Digby, 
 23). The composition of the poem is attributed 
 to a Norman, and the date of it placed between the 
 Norman conquest of England in 1066 and the 
 Crusaders' conquest of Jerusalem in 1099. The 
 handwriting, as distinguished from the com- 
 position, is dated about 11 70. Romance arrives 
 six centuries after the overthrow of the Western 
 Empire, and appears where a province had been torn 
 from it long before the Latin Gauls had ceased to 
 
i6 THE SPRINGS OF ROMANCE IN 
 
 speak or write in languages derived from Rome. 
 We know when and where Romance appeared. To 
 understand why it came, and to surmise at what it 
 was, we must sketch in the events of those six 
 centuries which preceded and — as I shall urge — 
 prepared for the Advent of Romance after 1050 a.d., 
 and for its rapid development a hundred years 
 later. 
 
 In the fifth century two things happened which 
 began the preparation of Gaul to be the nursery- 
 garden of Romance. A Celtic people established 
 themselves in the north-west of Gaul, thenceforward 
 to be called Brittany, where their language is still 
 spoken by the Bretons. They came in numbers, 
 and the territory which they occupied ceased to be 
 Latin. We are told that they sang lays to a little 
 harp, called the rote. But none of their songs 
 appear in literature for centuries. Again in the 
 fifth century, a Teutonic nation, the Francs, 
 
THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE 17 
 
 invaded the north-east of Gaul, and soon ceased, 
 for the most part, to be German. They were few 
 in number, and their ambition was to be Hke the 
 Latin aristocracy. Their mother- tongue, after a 
 brief interval, contained more words of Latin than 
 of Teutonic derivation. Their laws were written 
 in learned Latin. Their religion, after 496 a.d., 
 was orthodox Latin Christianity. Clovis, or 
 Chlodoweg — if you like that name better — preferred 
 his title of a " Roman patrician " to the glory of 
 his conquests. We are told that the Francs sang 
 the deeds of their kings in poems, accompanied on 
 harps. It may well be so. But none of these 
 poems have ever appeared in literature. They 
 may, or may not, have been romantic. We have 
 no record of Prankish verse, save one. There are 
 eight Latin lines in the life of a saint composed 
 in the ninth century. They refer to a legendary 
 action of King Clotair in the seventh century. 
 
1 8 THE SPRINGS OF ROMANCE IN 
 
 The author presents them as excerpts translated 
 from a song which, he tells us, was popular at that 
 time. We have nothing else. To reconstruct 
 these non-existent effusions by inference, and even 
 to cite them by name as the panegyric of this or 
 that Prankish king, the song of Clotair, or of 
 Chlodoweg, is, in the words of an eminent French 
 scholar, " a triumph of scientific hypothesis." In 
 the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries France was 
 still Roman and unromantic, but not Teutonic, 
 and with Celts on one flank. 
 
 In the eighth century a third event continued 
 the preparation for Romance. The Arabs, after 
 conquering Spain, invaded the south of France and 
 were defeated at the battle of Tours by Charles 
 Martel on the loth October 732. We know that 
 the Arabs sang songs, for we possess seven odes 
 written by them in " the days of ignorance " before 
 Mahomet. And we know that, in the ninth 
 
THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE 19 
 
 century, they brought into southern Europe the 
 viol, or fiddle, conveyed from Persia, upon which 
 Jongleurs were, much later, to accompany the 
 Romances of Europe. But the early influence of 
 the Arabs produced no romance. On the contrary, 
 it produced dry translations of the least romantic 
 works of the Greeks. Even the epoch-making 
 contest at Tours bequeathed no legacy to romantic 
 literature. Charles the Hammer never appears as 
 one of its heroes. It was his grandson, Charlemagne, 
 who became all but the greatest of romantic 
 figures. His legendary exploits overshadowed his 
 achievements, and were sung for centuries in every 
 language of Europe. Yet the first legend, that we 
 still possess, was not written until some two hundred 
 and seventy years after his death. Two other events 
 were needed to complete the preparation. Despite 
 the lays of the Bretons, the songs of the Francs, the 
 odes of the Arabs, accompanied by rotes, harps, 
 
20 THE SPRINGS OF ROMANCE IN 
 
 and viols, it is not until after the Normans had 
 established themselves in France at the beginning 
 of the tenth century, and conquered the English in 
 the second half of the eleventh century, that we 
 find the advent of Romance in European literature. 
 The placid province of Latin Gaul was modified 
 by the juxtaposition of Bretons, the absorption of 
 Francs, the expulsion of Arabs, the absorption of 
 Normans, and the conquest of England, before the 
 " Song of Roland " appears. 
 
 The Song of Roland 
 
 The ironical adage Post hoc ergo propter hoc 
 may be discounted at once, for the song reveals the 
 influence of all those five events, and, but for their 
 happening, could not be what it is. It is written 
 in French ; because Latinised Gaul, having ceased to 
 be Celtic, never became German, but became France. 
 
THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE 21 
 
 Its hero, Roland, is the Count of the Marches of 
 Brittany, and it teems with praise of the Bretons : 
 
 " Icil chevalchent en guise de baruns 
 Dreites lur hanstes, fermez lur gunfanuns " (1, 3054), 
 
 "These ride with the high air of fighting-men, 
 Their spears erect, and battle-pennons furled " ; 
 
 because France was in contact with Celtic Brittany. 
 Its action, in defiance of history, consists of conflicts 
 with Saracens ; because such conflicts in the eighth, 
 ninth, and tenth centuries held the imagination of 
 Europe with a growing horror, that culminated when 
 the Turks took Jerusalem from the Arabs, to profane 
 her shrines and persecute their pious visitors. It is 
 written by a Norman ; because the author dis- 
 covered, in the legendary feats of Roland, a parallel 
 to the historic conquests of his race. But he found 
 it difficult to harmonise the two. So Normandy, 
 though conquered, in his song is still " la franche " 
 — the free (1. 2324). Duke Richard is one of 
 
22 THE SPRINGS OF ROMANCE IN 
 
 Charlemagne's twelve peers, and his Normans are 
 picked from all nations for the highest praise : 
 
 '^ Armes unt beles e bons chevals curanz ; 
 Ja pur murir cil n'ierent recreant ; 
 Suz ciel, n'ad gent ki durer poissent tant " (1. 3047). 
 
 " Handsome their weapons and their coursers strong ; 
 Never for death will they admit the wrong ; 
 No other nation can endure so long." 
 
 The reference to England, on the other hand, 
 is in the scornful tone of one who had himself 
 followed William to Hastings and Westminster; 
 because the song was written after, and not before, 
 the conquest of England. To that opinion, at any 
 rate, the weight of French scholarship inclines, as 
 I hold conclusively. When the death-stricken 
 Roland recites the countries he has won for 
 Charles with his sword Durendal, his slighting 
 reference to England — 
 
 " E Engletere que il teneit sa cambre " (1. 2332), 
 " And England which he kept for his own room," 
 
THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE 23 
 
 finds no counterpart in any allusion to other 
 legendary conquests. The Saracen is detested, 
 but the Englishman is despised, whilst other 
 nations, although defeated, are hailed as honoured 
 vassals who follow the oriflamme to war. Finally, 
 this song, and no other, won a way for Romance 
 in the literature of Europe; because northern 
 French, by becoming the Royal language of 
 England, attained a position which Latin, for lack 
 of general comprehension, could no longer hold. 
 Northern French became the tongue common to 
 many nations, and was adapted, as Latin never had 
 been, to the expression of Romance. Here, I must 
 note a possibility of misconception. It is urged 
 that some features in the song we possess are earlier 
 than the date attributed to it. Again, we know 
 that the Jongleur, Taillefer, sang some other song 
 of Roland as he rode in front of the Norman 
 advance at Hastings, tossing his sword in the air 
 
24 THE SPRINGS OF ROMANCE IN 
 
 and catching it by the hilt. But these considera- 
 tions do not affect my argument. None of the 
 romantic features in the song can be earUer than the 
 Celtic and Saracenic influences ; most of them must 
 be later than the Norman influence, and that in- 
 fluence did not carry Romance into literature until 
 after the Conquest. 
 
 The view that the " Song of Roland " could not 
 have been written until after the events I have 
 enumerated, or be what it is but for their 
 happening, is confirmed if we glance at the his- 
 toric fact on which it is based, and compare the 
 song with the account written at the time. For 
 the song reveals the influence of all these events, 
 and the contemporary account shows scarce a trace 
 of any one of them. 
 
 On the 15th of August 778, Charlemagne's 
 army had retired from Spain into France over the 
 Pyrenees in safety. But his rear-guard was 
 
THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE 25 
 
 ambushed by the Basques in a closely -wooded 
 defile and killed out to the last man. That is 
 the historic fact. Now turn to the contemporary 
 account. Charlemagne's secretary, Eginhard, de- 
 scribes the tragedy {vita et gesta Ca?^oli cogno- 
 me7tto Magni^ etc., cap. ix.) in seventeen and a half 
 lines of prosaic Latin. There is no word of the 
 Saracens. Three of the slaughtered chieftains are 
 named, and of these the third, apparently in order of 
 importance, is Rutlandus, the prasfect of the frontier 
 of Brittany {Rutlandus Britannici limitis prcefecttcs). 
 That is all that history tells us of Roland. He is 
 not even in command, and sounds no 
 
 " blast of that dread horn 
 On Fontarabian echoes borne," 
 
 that caught the ear of Walter Scott as he was 
 writing Marmio7i, 
 
 We hear no more of him in any written word 
 that remains until his romantic glory is unrolled in 
 
26 THE SPRINGS OF ROMANCE IN 
 
 the four thousand and two ringing lines of the 
 Cha7ison cie Roland, Thenceforward it reverberates 
 through Hterature, expanding into the stupendous 
 cycle of Carlovingian romances, and their deriva- 
 tives, down to the day on which Ariosto presented 
 the Cardinal of Este with his poem " of ladies and 
 of knights, of battles and loves, of courtesies and of 
 daring adventures " : 
 
 " Le Donne, i Cavalier, I'Arme, gli Amori, 
 Le Cortesie, I'audaci Imprese io canto, 
 Che furo al tempo che passaro i Mori 
 D'Africa il mare, e in Francia nocquer tanto, 
 Sequendo I'ire e i giovenil furori 
 D'Agramante lor Re che si die vanto 
 Di Vendicar la morte di Trojano 
 Sopra Re Carlo Imperator Romano." 
 
 Incidentally the story of Roland gave proverbs 
 to the people — a Roland for an Oliver — and their 
 name to our peers, of whom we still hear so much, 
 even now, when Roland is almost forgotten. 
 
 This comparison between the song and the 
 
THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE 27 
 
 account written at the time exhibits — to adopt a 
 Hibernicism — a '' dry source " in the brief Latin 
 original ; a long silence ; and, then, the sudden 
 advent of unmistakable Romance, full of the 
 wonders and legends of many lands. Scenery plays 
 her part in human emotion. The mountains are 
 filled with menace : 
 
 " Halt sunt li pui e tenebrus e grant 
 Li val parfunt e les ewes curanz " (1. 1830). 
 
 '* High are the peaks, and shadow-gloom'd, and vast, 
 Profound the valleys where the torrents dash." 
 
 We are told the name of each champion's horse and 
 sword, and their marvellous qualities. 
 
 The theory that Romance arrived as a result of 
 the events I have enumerated is still further con- 
 firmed, if we proceed from the advent to the huge 
 development of Romance which flooded Europe a 
 hundred years later. For that development follows 
 immediately on a renewal and multiplication of the 
 
28 THE SPRINGS OF ROMANCE IN 
 
 same or similar influences. Literature is transfigured 
 into Romance by the twilight of the West, the 
 mirage of the East, and the uncouth strength of 
 the North, in direct proportion to the commingling 
 of West and East and North in the politics of the 
 eleventh and twelfth centuries. 
 
 I would even dare to suggest that our first 
 version of the "Song of Roland" received some later 
 touches, here and there, during the twelfth century, 
 after those influences had been multiplied, i.e, at a 
 time more nearly approaching the date, 1170, attri- 
 buted to the handwriting of the MS. (Bodleian, Digby, 
 23). One argument for that view is rather technical. 
 French scholars date the composition of the song 
 before the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099, because it 
 nowhere mentions that event. This, however, in- 
 volves the difficulty of accounting for the mention of 
 a valley in Cappadocia, called Butentrot, through 
 which the Crusaders did actually march. How comes 
 
THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE 29 
 
 it, we may ask, that the first column of the Saracen's 
 legendary army in the song (1. 3220) is said to have 
 been recruited from that place? May not the 
 positive inclusion of Butentrot outweigh the negative 
 omission of Jerusalem ? And the more, since the 
 author, who swears he is telling the truth, might 
 conceivably borrow local colour from Butentrot for 
 an imaginary picture of the eighth century, but 
 would scarcely insert the most resounding event of 
 his own age, 321 years before it happened. 
 
 Another argument may be put in this way. 
 
 The song in the Oxford MS. contains three 
 catalogues of nations, viz. — the conquests re- 
 cited by Roland before he dies, the divisions 
 in Charlemagne's avenging army, and the judges 
 summoned to try the traitor, Ganelon. The judges 
 include Bretons, Normans, and Poitevins (1. 3702). 
 The fifth, sixth, and seventh divisions of the avenging 
 army (1. 3027) are recruited from Normans, Bretons, 
 
30 THE SPRINGS OF ROMANCE IN 
 
 and Poitevins. The conquests (1. 2322) include 
 Brittany, Normandy, Poitou, Maine, Aquitaine, and, 
 you will be surprised to hear, Scotland, Wales, 
 Ireland, and England. 
 
 " Jo Ten cunquls Escoce, Guales, Irlande 
 E Engletere que il teneit sa cambre." 
 
 Looking to literature, excepting the " Song of 
 Roland," no other poem about Charlemagne — and 
 there are many — attributes to him any one of these 
 conquests. Looking to history, no king ever led all 
 these nations in war, or accepted homage from their 
 sovereigns, except Henry of Anjou, who became 
 Henry 11. of England, and married Eleanor of Poitou 
 and Aquitaine. For further significance, Anjou, 
 his ancestral fief, is added to these conquests in 
 other foreign MSS. and omitted from the Oxford MS. 
 I suggest that the MS. was retouched, in respect of 
 these names, after Henry had, by conquest and 
 marriage, asserted a shadowy over-lordship from the 
 
THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE 31 
 
 Pyrenees to the Grampians. The singular ascription 
 of such conquests to Charlemagne, and the army-list 
 of his forces, would have lacked all approach to 
 likelihood except to audiences familiar with the 
 short-lived climax of Henry's political career. 
 
 Even if this suggestion be scouted, the catalogues 
 of nations in the " Song of Roland " are relevant to 
 my theme. They illuminate the theory that Romance 
 sprang from a mingling of Western and Eastern 
 influences, at a time when the races of Europe 
 were bracketed together by the conquests and 
 marriages of northern leaders. 
 
 The Development of Romance 
 
 That theory is, once more, confirmed by the 
 great romantic development of the twelfth century; 
 and no illustration of it can, I submit, be more 
 convincing than the facts of Henry's political career. 
 
32 THE SPRINGS OF ROMANCE IN 
 
 They constitute a renewal and multiplication of the 
 influences which preceded the advent of Romance, 
 and were immediately followed by a development 
 of Romance that, from 1150 onwards, flooded the 
 whole area of mediaeval literature. If we take the 
 most important of these renewals, and then the most 
 renowned Romances of the Middle Ages, we can, I 
 believe, establish a direct connection between the 
 two. 
 
 The Eastern, Saracenic, influence was renewed 
 by Henry's marriage with Eleanor — Alienor or 
 ^nor — a most remarkable woman, to whose memory 
 scant justice is done if we associate it exclusively 
 with Fair Rosamund and Woodstock. Omitting — 
 with regret — most of the sensational adventures in 
 her long life of eighty-two years, we must, for our 
 purpose, recall that she was the granddaughter of 
 William of Poitou, who fought in the First Crusade, 
 and was himself the earliest Troubadour, or poet of 
 
THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE 33 
 
 southern France. He wrote, " I will make a new 
 song " : 
 
 " Farai chansonetta nova," 
 
 and so he did. That song is more closely related 
 to modern poetry than any masterpiece in the 
 classics (W. P. Ker, Dark Ages). Its reiterated 
 rhymes thrill down the ages till they wake an echo 
 from the lyre of Robert Burns. Eleanor, the wife 
 of two kings, the mother of two kings and of two 
 daughters, married to great vassals whose songs are 
 still remembered, is responsible for a good deal of 
 romance. Thanks to her, St. George became, in 
 the words of Caxton, " patrone of" the " royame of 
 Englond and the crye of men of warre." For that 
 was the battle-cry of her grandfather before the walls 
 of Jerusalem. It descended to her, together with 
 his love of poetry and his love of crusading. She 
 accompanied her first husband, the king of France, 
 to the Second Crusade, in 1147 ; was divorced in 
 
34 THE SPRINGS OF ROMANCE IN 
 
 1 152, and, within two months, married Henry ot 
 Anjou, the king to be of England, bringing with 
 her " St. George for England " and the dower of 
 Poitou and Aquitaine. But these were not all that 
 she bestowed. The Troubadours of southern 
 France, after attending her to the East, followed in 
 her train; reinforced by Trouveres, the poets of 
 northern France. She brought to Great Britain, 
 with signal results in literature, the artists who were 
 to fashion the romantic material of many voyages 
 into the great romances of Europe. 
 
 The Western, Celtic, influence was renewed 
 when Henry became suzerain of Brittany. It was 
 multiplied when his motley array of vassals, drawn 
 from one-half of France, and, accompanied by 
 Eleanor's poets, were brought into contact with the 
 legends of Wales. The historic Henry, as Count 
 of Anjou, Maine, Touraine, and Poitou, Duke of 
 Normandy and Aquitaine, suzerain of Brittany, 
 
THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE 35 
 
 king of England and overlord of Wales, had 
 received the homage of the king of Scotland in 
 1 157, and connived ten years later at the departure, 
 through Wales, of the pioneers in the conquest of 
 Ireland. He, like the legendary Charlemagne, was 
 the war-lord of many nations who had crossed 
 swords with Saracens and Celts and listened to 
 Norman translations of their strange songs. No 
 sovereign, we may add, except, perhaps, his consort, 
 Eleanor, was better equipped for turning political 
 adventure to poetical advantage. His earliest tutor, 
 Master Peter of Saintes, was " learned above all his 
 contemporaries in the science of verse." Henry 
 himself " loved reading only less than hunting." 
 His hands, it was said, " were never empty," always 
 holding '' a bow or a book." He spoke French and 
 Latin well, and knew something of every tongue from 
 the Bay of Biscay to the Jordan. This great lover of 
 learning and adventure was, for a time, " the virtual 
 
36 THE SPRINGS OF ROMANCE IN 
 
 arbiter of Western Europe " [Dictionary of National 
 Biography), The lives of Eleanor and Henry were 
 potent factors in the renewal of the influences that 
 preceded the advent of Romance. 
 
 Let us now turn to the earliest and most 
 renowned among the poems that mark its develop- 
 ment. We shall find that, like the " Song of Roland," 
 most of them derive from a short, unromantic 
 original in Latin ; that all were written in northern 
 French, and many of them in England, in the 
 second half of the twelfth century, and that all 
 elaborate themes made vivid by the contact of 
 northern armies with Celts and Saracens. 
 
 The Romance of Alexander 
 
 The " dry source " of the Romance of Alexander 
 
 is a Latin abridgment (eighth century) of an earlier 
 
 Latin translation (fourth century) from a Greek 
 
 forgery (second century). It produces no effect 
 
THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE 37 
 
 for centuries. Only after the First Crusade had 
 renewed contact with the East, is it translated into 
 a French dialect and transfigured. The " Milites " 
 become " chevaliers," and Alexander a king sur- 
 rounded by his barons. Of this version little 
 remains. But after the Second Crusade, in which 
 Eleanor took part, and her marriage with Henry, 
 the poets of their continental dominions begin the 
 portentous expansion of the tale and embroider it 
 with oriental marvels. We get the '' Fountain of 
 Youth," " Gog and Magog," and the oracular 
 
 "... Trees of the Sun and Moon^ that speak 
 And told King Alexander of his death'' 
 
 — Broome's Antipodes^ in Lambe's Specimens. 
 
 " ' Signor^ fait Alixandre^ '■ je vus voel demander^ 
 Se des merveilles d'Inde me saves Hen conter' 
 Cil li ont respondu : ' iS^ tu vius escouter 
 Ja te dirons merveilles^ s'es poras esprover. 
 La sus en ces desers pues ii Arbres trover 
 Qjii c pies ont de haut, et de grossor sunt per. 
 Li Solaus et La Lune les ont fait si serer 
 due sevent tous langages et entendre et parler.' " 
 
 {Chanson d' Alixandre, ed. 1861, Dinan, p. 357 ; 
 Yule's Marco Polo^ i. 122.) 
 
38 THE SPRINGS OF ROMANCE IN 
 
 In a thirteenth-century version, we witness the first 
 appearance of " The Nine Worthies " — Joshua, 
 David, and Maccabaeus, for the Jews ; Hector, 
 Alexander, and Caesar, for the Heathen ; Arthur, 
 Charlemagne, and Godfrey of Bologne, for the 
 Christians. They made their last bow to the public, 
 so far as I know, in Shakespeare's Loves L,abour 'x 
 Lost. Meanwhile they bulk largely in literature, 
 and were painted by Perugino. A hundred years 
 before the antics of Holophernes, Caxton, in the 
 beautiful Preface to his Life of Godefrey of Boloyne^ 
 beseeched Almighty God that Edward the Fourth of 
 England might deserve the tenth place by launching 
 yet another Crusade, but in vain, for it never set sail. 
 To these fabulous expansions the French Alexandrine 
 owes its name, and, until Plutarch was translated 
 at the Renaissance, they moulded the popular 
 conception of Alexander the Great. 
 
THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE 39 
 
 The Romance of Troy 
 
 The " dry source " of the Romance of Troy 
 is once more a prosaic Latin abridgment of Greek 
 forgeries, impudently fathered on a suppositious 
 defender of Troy, Dares Phrygian, and a non- 
 existent besieger, Dictys Cretensis. It produces no 
 effect till, in 11 60, one of Eleanor's poets, Benedict 
 of Sainte More, dedicates to her his expansion, 
 which reaches the respectable length of over thirty 
 thousand lines. He asserts the unimpeachable 
 testimony of Dares and Dictys at Homer's ex- 
 pense : — 
 
 " Ce que dist D aires et Ditis 
 I avons si re trait et mis'' 
 
 And away goes the development of Romance, till 
 the love of Troilus and Briseida, which Benedict 
 invented, after figuring in Boccaccio, supplies the 
 theme of Chaucer's great romantic poem, and of 
 
40 THE SPRINGS OF ROMANCE IN 
 
 Shakespeare's play. In the course of the transition 
 Homer's Briseis becomes Shakespeare's Cressida. 
 
 *' l^he skilful painting made for Priam's Troy,'' 
 
 which Shakespeare weaves into Lucrece (11. 1366- 
 1559), and the speech required by Hamlet from the 
 players, and Lorenzo's ecstasy {Merchant of Venice^ 
 
 V. i), 
 
 " The moon shines bright : — In such a night as this. 
 When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees. 
 And they did make no noise, — in such a night 
 Troilus, viethinks, mounted the Troyan walls. 
 And sigKd his soul toward the Grecian tents^ 
 Where Cressid lay that night ^^ — 
 
 are derived from Benedict's expansion no less than 
 from Virgil, and not from Homer. The Romance 
 of Troy left a deep impression in European literature, 
 largely because of what a French scholar has called 
 " the monomania for Trojan descent." Shortly 
 after its appearance, no one in France or Great 
 Britain, with pretensions to birth, cared to trace 
 his pedigree from any ancestor less remote than 
 
THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE 41 
 
 ^neas. So, in close succession to the Romance 
 of Troy, we get a romantic ^neid [Roman d'Enee)^ 
 attributed by Gaston Paris to the same author, and 
 by others to Marie de France, a poetess, who also 
 wrote in England under the auspices of Henry and 
 Eleanor. In it the lordship of the world is 
 promised to the heirs of Rome and descendants of 
 j^neas, who are none other than the nations over 
 whom Henry held sway — 
 
 " Rome fut grant et Men enclose 
 A mervelle fu puis grant cose 
 Trestot le munt ot en haillie world 
 
 Li oir en orent signorie heirs 
 
 Qjii d Eneas descentu sunt 
 Signor furent par tot le munt.''' 
 
 The Romance of Thebes 
 
 About the same time, and, as some hold, again 
 from the prolific pen of Benedict, we get the 
 Romance of Thebes. The " dry source " is a 
 Latin abridgment of Statius. In the expansion 
 
42 THE SPRINGS OF ROMANCE IN 
 
 we read — of the daughters of Adrastus — that their 
 laughter and kisses outweighed the worth of London 
 and Poitiers, the capitals of the realms of Henry and 
 Eleanor, 
 
 " Mieuz vaut lor ris et lor baisiers 
 ^e ne fait Londres ne Peltiers.''* 
 
 The Castle of Montflor is besieged by a thousand 
 knights, and Saracen Almoravides (Almoraives) from 
 the Crusades take part in an ambush of Hippomedon. 
 The Romance of Thebes furnished titles to romantic 
 versions of Byzantine stories which the Crusaders 
 brought back from the East. Parthenopeus, one 
 of the seven against Thebes, becomes Partonopex 
 of Blois in a fairy tale of singular beauty, that 
 recalls the story of Cupid and Psyche, but with 
 the parts reversed, for it is the knight who is 
 forbidden to look at the lady. 
 
 I am no more concerned, than I am qualified, 
 to obtrude an opinion when scholars dispute the 
 
THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE 43 
 
 attribution of the '' Thebes " to the author of the 
 " Troy," or when they differ on points of priority, 
 interesting in themselves, but immaterial to this 
 argument. It sufRces that, but for the Crusades, 
 the three romances — of Alexander, of Troy, and 
 of Thebes — would not have been written to 
 compete in popular favour with the romances of 
 Charlemagne. They are what they are, because 
 of events among which the most typical, and 
 probably the most important, is that Eleanor 
 played the part — it may be in more senses than 
 one — of a Damozel Errant in the East. They 
 produced the development of Romance because 
 others, but Eleanor above all, attracted Trouba- 
 dours, the masters of rhyme, and Trouveres, the 
 masters of narrative, to display these oriental wares 
 in French, the Royal language of England, and 
 common tongue of every Court in Western Europe. 
 Amid a maze of dates we can put our finger on 
 
44 THE SPRINGS OF ROMANCE IN 
 
 the year 1147, in which Eleanor set out for 
 Palestine, and say, with confidence, that here is a 
 renewal of Eastern influence : and, I would add, 
 thanks to Troubadours, the triumph of rhyme ; 
 thanks to Trouveres, the art of telling a story. 
 
 The Arthurian Romances 
 
 But if we do put our finger on that year, we 
 shall find that we have also covered the source 
 from which a renewal of Western influence inun- 
 dated all Europe with the legends of Arthur and 
 his knights ; incidentally submerging the fame of 
 Charlemagne and the twelve peers. In the same 
 year, 1147, Geoffrey of Monmouth dedicated the 
 Hist or i a Regum Brita7i7iice to Robert, Earl of 
 Gloucester, the uncle of Henry of Anjou, who 
 directed the first steps of his nephew's dazzling 
 career. It is a short book written in Latin by 
 a Welshman. But it is the '' dry source " of 
 
THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE 45 
 
 many a river of song. Arthur and Guunhumara, 
 or Guenever, are here introduced for the first 
 time into Hterature that remains. Let no one 
 suppose, for a moment, that Geoffrey invented 
 the legends which enchanted Europe for so long, 
 and have now renewed their spell through the art 
 of Tennyson and Swinburne and Wagner. He 
 found them : but whether in Wales, or in the 
 " very old book " — librum vetustissimum — brought, 
 so he says, out of Brittany by Walter, Archdeacon 
 of Oxford, is quite beside the mark. What 
 Geoffrey did was to capture the world of letters. 
 His prosaic handling of Celtic mythology in a 
 learned tongue imposed on the clerks of Europe. 
 They received it for history, and were amazed at 
 the close fulfilment of Merlin's prophecies down 
 to the very year in which Geoffrey began to 
 write (1135). We need not intervene when 
 scholars, inspired by local patriotism, dispute the 
 
46 THE SPRINGS OF ROMANCE IN 
 
 racial extraction of this or that matter involved ; 
 nor attempt to decide whether the Christian graal 
 was a Pagan caldron, or even, as some have it, 
 a stone. It is sufficient to discover what happened 
 in literature. For until these legends won their 
 way into literature they could not produce a 
 romantic effect, and may, for all we can tell, have 
 been destitute of any tinge of romance. 
 
 Geoffrey's book was forthwith translated into 
 French poems written by Anglo-Normans, and, 
 apart from its contents, gave a general impulse to 
 the production of verse spun from the legends of 
 Brittany and Wales. In 1150 Marie de France, 
 who lived in England, begins to write her fifteen 
 lays. About the same year we get the first story 
 of Tristan and Yseut from Beroul, who wrote it in 
 England. Unless we realise that the author staged 
 his legend in the England of his day, without a 
 care for anachronisms, we shall be surprised to find 
 
THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE 47 
 
 the cathedral cities of Ely and Durham in the 
 kingdom of Cornwall : 
 
 '■^ N'a chevalier en son roiaume 
 Ne d'Eli d'antresqu' en Dureaume" (1. 2199). 
 
 In 1 1 5 5 Wace, an Anglo-Norman writing in 
 England, expands GeoiFrey's History into a long 
 French poem. He introduces the " Round Table" 
 into literature. "Arthur," he says (1. 998), "made 
 the round table, of which Bretons tell many fabulous 
 stories ; the vassals sat down to it all chivalrously 
 and all equal in degree " : 
 
 " Fist Artus la Roonde Table 
 Dont Breton dient mainte fable : 
 Hoc seoient li vassal 
 Tot chievalment et tot Ingal." equal. 
 
 In another passage (1. 10, 560) the three Arch- 
 bishops of London, York, and Carleon dine at the 
 same legendary board ; for to Wace it is a British 
 institution. Whether it hails, as a legend, from 
 Brittany, from Wales, or from Arthur's Seat by 
 
48 THE SPRINGS OF ROMANCE IN 
 
 Edinburgh, it certainly arrives in literature under the 
 auspices of Henry. Wace writes of him, "I find no 
 more benefactors except the king, Henry the Second, 
 who has given me a canonry and many other gifts. 
 May God repay him." Eventually it was exhibited 
 as a piece of furniture in Winchester, where Henry 
 had been crowned in 1 154. At Winchester, as at 
 Glastonbury, Henry's magnetic power polarised the 
 legends of his Western dominions, and attracted 
 French artists to sing them from all the realms 
 bracketed together by his political ambition. 
 Wace's poem, for the first time, weaves the story 
 of Tristan into the story of Arthur, and is 
 named, by a similar process, from Brutus, the 
 imaginary descendant of ^neas, the ancestor of 
 all the French and the British nations. This 
 romantic descent was " the kind of thing that 
 everybody could enjoy," and most people did up 
 to the end of the sixteenth century. It inspired 
 
THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE 49 
 
 Ronsard's " Franciade." I once found it set out 
 in a nobleman's commonplace book together with 
 other practical hints, such as the right dishes for a 
 banquet and the proper instruments for concerted 
 music. So late as 1605, Verstegan devotes a 
 stout volume to destroying the myth under the 
 imposing title, A Restitution of Decayed Intelligence 
 in Antiquities. 
 
 In 1 1 70 we get the second song of Tristan 
 from Thomas, another Anglo-Norman. In the 
 same year Christian of Troyes introduces, for the 
 first time, the love of Lancelot and Guenever. He 
 was not an Anglo-Norman, but the story was 
 supplied to him by Eleanor's eldest daughter. In 
 1 1 75 Christian introduces Perceval and the Graal 
 from a book lent by the Count of Flanders, who 
 had spent some months (1172) in England. After 
 that, for fifty years Arthur and Guenever and 
 Lancelot, Tristan and Yseut, the Round Table 
 
so THE SPRINGS OF ROMANCE IN 
 
 and the Holy Graal, are translated into every 
 Western tongue, and interlaced with every other 
 story that seemed true. A continuous legend of 
 Western conquerors was woven together, reaching 
 right down from the Argonauts who sought the 
 Golden Fleece, through the defenders of Troy, 
 and the founders of Rome, to the champions 
 who had recovered Jerusalem. Such Romances of 
 chivalry stood side by side with the " new " classics 
 on the shelves of Mary Stuart's library. Then they 
 disappear into dusty cupboards, to be released again 
 after the Romantic Revival. 
 
 Just as the advent of Romance sprang from 
 early contacts with Celtic mythology and Saracenic 
 marvels, so did the development expand when those 
 contacts were renewed and multiplied. Both found 
 their first expression in French poems, written for 
 the most part in England, because the conquest of 
 England exalted that tongue into the position held 
 
THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE 51 
 
 by Latin through the Dark Ages. But Latin was 
 for the learned alone ; whereas French, for many 
 reasons, appealed to the nations of Europe. To 
 the Celts it was the language of those who had 
 defeated their Saxon oppressors ; and to all Chris- 
 tian people the language of those who had delivered 
 Jerusalem. It was written by poets who welcomed 
 the legends which the Latins had rejected. Every 
 nation saw its folk-lore embellished by consummate 
 artists, and their eponymous heroes glorified with 
 pedigrees from the warriors who had redressed the 
 fall of Troy by erecting the walls of Rome. In 
 the French romances of the twelfth century Europe 
 " found herself." 
 
 Two Objections 
 
 Here let me anticipate some of the criticism 
 which I am conscious of provoking. It may be 
 said that I have ignored the Teutonic Romances. 
 
52 THE SPRINGS OF ROMANCE IN 
 
 In reply, I would submit that Teutonic Romance 
 branched off when the empire of Charlemagne was 
 divided between his successors, only to return into 
 the main channel of European literature after the 
 Romantic Revival. 
 
 The Sagas and the Nibelungenlied, and the 
 early English Beowulf, wxre not European romances 
 before the last century. Sigfried, originally a 
 Frankish hero, who picked up Burgundian attri- 
 butes and echoes of conflicts with the Huns, 
 counts for nothing in the Middle Ages by com- 
 parison with Roland or Arthur. The dwarf 
 Alberich creeps through a French romance, Huon 
 of Bordeau^ to emerge as Oberon in Shakespeare's 
 Midsummer Nighis Dream. But that may have 
 been because of his diminutive size. There was 
 no room for Teutonic gods and giants in a litera- 
 ture already crowded with colossal characters. Yet 
 the influence of the North is not absent from 
 
THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE 53 
 
 European romances. On the contrary, since it 
 was the Normans who launched them, the uncouth 
 strength of the North accounts for as much in 
 Romance as the glamour of the West, or the 
 mirage of the East. Perhaps it accounts for more 
 than either, and explains why all three were con- 
 demned together as " Gothic " during the classical 
 interregnum between the two Romantic periods. 
 
 It may be said that I have exaggerated the 
 importance of Eleanor's marriage with Henry of 
 Anjou. On that issue I " stick to my guns." 
 They married (115 2) five years after St. Bernard 
 launched the Second Crusade from Vezelay, at the 
 moment when Geoffrey of Monmouth published 
 the History of the Kings of Britain, Their 
 marriage united the influences attracted by those 
 two events from the East and West. It is when 
 they married, and where they married, that most 
 of the Springs of Romance commingle in the litera- 
 
54 THE SPRINGS OF ROMANCE IN 
 
 ture of Europe. Nor were the results of that 
 comminghng accidental. They were produced by 
 design ; and the designers were largely the poets 
 of Henry's and Eleanor's cosmopolitan court. 
 Mythological legends from the West, and miraculous 
 stories from the East, were guided into one channel 
 by the science of Troubadours — the gay science of 
 courteous love — and by the sterner skill of 
 northern Trouveres. The design was literary ; 
 but it was also political. Henry, an upstart and 
 a stranger to his Normans, Bretons, and Poitevins, 
 Gascons, Saxons, and Welshmen, found it convenient 
 to exploit the imaginary achievements of Arthurian 
 knights. None could be jealous of such shadows, 
 and, the less, since all were assured a common 
 descent from the defenders of Troy, and shown a 
 common foe in the assailants of Jerusalem. Henry 
 took the cross for the Third Crusade (1187) as a 
 desperate expedient to save his work of unification 
 
THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE ^s 
 
 on the eve of its collapse. His work, akin as it is 
 to the work of contemporary sovereigns, affords 
 the most salient example of a vast attempt at 
 unification prosecuted throughout the politics and 
 literature of Europe ; and that effort of comprehen- 
 sion reveals, so I believe, the reason v^hy Romance 
 captured the imagination of Europe in the middle 
 of the twelfth century . 
 
 What is Romance ? 
 
 I have done what I could to discover When and 
 Where and Why Romance came into European 
 literature. But what is Romance ? Are we any 
 nearer a definition ? Here is a power which pro- 
 duced great changes in Europe from iioo to 
 1550, and reproduced them from 1800 until now. 
 Through all those centuries there must have been 
 something in the mind of Europe which needed 
 Romance and sustained it. The unromantic in- 
 
56 THE SPRINGS OF ROMANCE IN 
 
 terval shrinks to the relative proportions of an 
 episode in our Western civilisation. Clearly, 
 Romance is not a tangle of absurdities to be 
 dismissed as '' rot " by the Cardinal of Este, or 
 despised as " Gothic " by the imitators of classic 
 models. " Imitation will after though it break her 
 neck" (S. Daniel, Defence of Rhi?ne^ 1603). But 
 Romance is a tissue. In the twelfth century, when 
 it took hold of the Middle Ages, Romance displays 
 a deliberate weaving together of many-coloured 
 strands. Celtic glamour, the uncouth strength of 
 the North, and marvels from the fabulous East, are 
 interlaced in one woof which unfolds a continuous 
 story of Europe, from the Argonauts' quest of the 
 Golden Fleece, by way of the fall of Troy, and the 
 foundation of Rome, to the conquest of Jerusalem 
 by Crusaders. An examination of these strands 
 reveals that the earliest and most alien are largely 
 mythological. They consist of many attempts 
 
THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE si 
 
 made by many races, in different ages and distant 
 countries, to express in symbols their guesses at 
 the origin and destiny, the hopes and fears, 
 of man. 
 
 May we, then, infer that Romance is compara- 
 tive mythology ? In a sense that is true. Its 
 elements are largely mythological. But that view 
 will not yield a definition of Romance. If it did, 
 all mythologies would be obviously romantic. But 
 are they ? There is nothing romantic in a savage's 
 belief that the Creator of the World is a great hare, 
 or in a Greek legend that men and women sprang 
 from stones thrown behind them by Deucalion and 
 Pyrrha. These explanations are not romantic so 
 long as they satisfy the curiosity of their authors. 
 They only begin to be romantic — either when they 
 cease to offer a tolerable answer to the riddle of 
 the universe ; or, in a greater degree, when they 
 confront the mind of another civilisation which has 
 
 H 
 
/ 
 
 58 THE SPRINGS OF ROMANCE IN 
 
 explained the universe by a wholly different im- 
 aginative process. Mythologies begin to be romantic 
 when they become strange by reason of their 
 antiquity or alien character. Breton and Welsh 
 legends were not romantic to the Celts, when 
 they conceived them. Nor were the sagas romantic 
 to the Icelanders. On the contrary, their rugged 
 strength reproduced a rugged reality. Nor is magic 
 romantic in the East ; it is familiar there. These 
 strands in the fabric of romance became romantic 
 when they struck more modern, and wholly alien, 
 modes of thought by their strangeness. Even this 
 impact of the strange in mythology will not wholly 
 account for the nature of romance. If it did, Latin 
 literature would have been romantic. The Romans, 
 no less than the Normans, were confronted by Celts 
 and Teutons and the fabulous East, yet the impact 
 of outlandish legends produced but little romance in 
 Latin literature. Our search for the nature of 
 
THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE 59 
 
 Romance must be directed not only to the strange 
 in mythology, but, more closely, to the reaction 
 produced in the minds that were startled by that 
 strangeness. If we find that the attitude towards 
 strange mythologies of periods called Classic differs 
 profoundly from the attitude of periods called 
 Romantic, we may discover a clue to the nature 
 of Romance in the contrast so revealed. And that 
 is what we do find. Classic periods repudiated 
 strange mythologies and Romantic periods welcomed 
 them. Both aimed at unity in their order of 
 thought and, so far as the Romans were concerned, 
 in their order of the world's government. But the 
 Classic world aimed at unity by exclusion, and the 
 Middle Ages at unity by comprehension. 
 
 The Greeks stood for understanding the universe 
 by reducing it to the terms of their lofty intelli- 
 gence, expressed in terms of their all but perfect 
 language. The Romans stood for governing the 
 
6o THE SPRINGS OF ROMANCE IN 
 
 world by reducing it to one august state with one 
 Imperial religion. To the Greeks the Barbarian 
 was unintelligible ; to the Romans, ungovernable. 
 So both repelled him, and all his strange imagina- 
 tions, as tending to disturb the pursuit of lucidity 
 and order. It is not the goal of unity, but the 
 method chosen for reaching that goal, which stamped 
 its exclusive character on the Classic world, and 
 sterilised classic literature to romance, save for some 
 faint touches in the earliest and latest poems that 
 dealt with wandering, and sometimes paused to 
 wonder. Even in their own mythology the Greeks 
 got rid of their Titans at the beginning of the 
 world ; whereas the uncouth North kept its giants 
 at endless war against it gods : and the Persians 
 retained Ahrimahn in perpetual conflict with 
 Ormuzd ; and the Celts were uncertain whether 
 their Arthur would ever return from the twilight 
 of Avalon. 
 
THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE 6i 
 
 On the other hand, if we turn to the first 
 Romantic period, we find the most striking character- 
 istic of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in a 
 huge attempt at unity, throughout politics and 
 literature, prosecuted by an all but universal com- 
 prehension. In that age political actors strove to 
 weld Europe into one, assisted by literary authors 
 who sought to correlate with that policy every 
 known record of the Drama of Mankind. Nothing 
 came amiss to them. The political actors re- 
 pudiated no race, however foreign, and the literary 
 authors, no legend however ancient or far-fetched. 
 Rather did they embrace the strange, seeming to 
 recognise in it something lacking from their own 
 conventions, but akin to a common humanity. 
 They aimed at unity by comprehension, and that 
 method, at least in the domain of literature, was 
 resumed after the Romantic Revival. Walter Scott 
 and Victor Hugo, no less than Benedict of Sainte- 
 
62 THE SPRINGS OF ROMANCE IN 
 
 More and Christian of Troyes, were eager to 
 welcome the strange from the East, the West, or 
 the North. We may say of each, 
 
 " nexuque pio longinqua revinxit." 
 
 I am not concerned to exalt the Romantic, above 
 the Classic method in Literature. Both have their 
 several glories, and peculiar seeds of decay. When 
 Romantic interlacing of many themes degenerates 
 into a love of intricacy for its own sake, Romance 
 becomes trivial, and tedious. It is then replaced 
 by classic admiration for the noblest models. But 
 when that degenerates into a love of imitation for 
 its own sake, the classic method becomes slavish, 
 and tedious in its turn. Then we note a Romantic 
 Revival. I am solely concerned to discover a 
 distinction between periods called Classic, and periods 
 called Romantic, which may yield a clue to the 
 mystery of Romance. Such a distinction is, I 
 believe, disclosed in the diversity of their attitudes 
 
THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE 63 
 
 towards the strange and, specially, towards the 
 strange in mythology. It is all but impossible to 
 analyse a reaction of the mind. We cannot put 
 emotions in a crucible. Yet, guided by this pro- 
 found distinction, we may, perhaps, say that 
 Romance results from welcoming the strange, and 
 specially from welcoming the symbols, perforce 
 fantastic, in which foreign lands and far-away ages 
 have sought to express their " intimations of im- 
 mortality " and doubtful wonder at '' that perpetual 
 revolution which we see to be in all things that 
 never remain the same." 
 
 Romantic Scenery 
 
 We get a tentative definition, if we say that 
 Romance is not simply the strange, but a result of 
 welcoming the strange, instead of excluding it. 
 Let us test that definition by seeing if it applies to 
 things generally called romantic. Take a hackneyed 
 
64 THE SPRINGS OF ROMANCE IN 
 
 illustration — mountain scenery. Since the Revival 
 of Romance, and the novels of Walter Scott, most 
 people agree that mountain scenery is romantic. 
 The definition applies to that view, and goes some 
 way to explain it. Mountain scenery is not 
 romantic, or even strange, to the mountaineer who 
 wrests a hard-won livelihood from its crags and 
 heather. It was strange, but not romantic, to the 
 cultured sybarite of the eighteenth century who 
 describes it in his journal as a " horrid alp." It 
 is romantic to the '' heart city-pent " of the age 
 in which we live, and only because its strangeness 
 is welcome. 
 
 Allegory 
 
 " a est le Romant de la Rose 
 Ou r art d' Amors est tote enclosed 
 
 Reverting to the earlier Romantic period, this 
 definition will, I believe, throw a light on one of its 
 features ; the labyrinthine development of Allegory. 
 
THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE 65 
 
 Assuming that an author seeks a welcome for some- 
 thing novel and strange, he must express the new 
 matter by images that are obvious to his audience ; 
 otherwise it remains unintelligible, and unwelcome. 
 In order to establish the coherence of his novelties 
 with the life to which all are accustomed, he 
 personifies his sentiments in characters with whom 
 all are familiar ; and that is allegory. Take a 
 capital example, the Romance of the Rose^ which 
 shaped and coloured European literature in the 
 thirteenth century, and for long afterwards. The 
 author of the first part (Guillaume de Lorris, 1237) 
 turns the new sentiments of " courteous love " into 
 the usual inhabitants of a mediaeval castle, and 
 illustrates the course of love " which never did 
 run smooth " by the ups and downs to which life 
 in a fortress was exposed. For that was the kind 
 of thing which any " fellow could understand." 
 The author of the first part sought a welcome 
 
66 THE SPRINGS OF ROMANCE IN 
 
 for a new kind of love, differing, in its delicacy, 
 from the romping of *' Floralia " and May Games, 
 sung in rustic ditties ; and, in its mysticism, from 
 the stark passion depicted in classic literature. 
 The author of the second part Qean de Meun, 
 1277) sought a welcome for a new kind of fun, 
 differing, in its whimsical satire, from the blunt 
 predicaments of Plautus, and the banter of Horace. 
 The new love, and the new fun, were made 
 familiar by allegory to secure a welcome for their 
 strangeness. 
 
 Fables 
 
 Will a welcome of the strange account for 
 another feature in mediaeval Romance : the revival 
 of Fables in which animals have most of the 
 speaking parts ? I think it will. If you except 
 the animals of ^sop, the dog of Odysseus, the 
 charger of Alexander, and Lesbia's sparrow, there 
 
THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE 67 
 
 are not many animals in the classics. Man 
 dominates the scene. On the other hand, there 
 is an irruption of animals into the first Period of 
 Romance. To secure a welcome for these in- 
 truders the earlier romantics had recourse to ^sop 
 — Ysopet as they call him — who had brought 
 them, long before, from the East, where animals 
 have ever been revered. Marie de France ushers 
 them in under the auspices of an imaginary emperor, 
 called Romulus, and dedicates her Fables to William 
 Longsword, the natural son of Henry 11. 
 
 " a cummencerai la primiere 
 Des Fables K'Tsopez escrit.'" 
 
 But the animals soon made themselves at home by 
 the charm of their own half-strangeness to man. 
 We know the names of the horses of nearly all the 
 heroes of Romance. In the thirteenth century, 
 without any aid from heroes, Reynard the Fox, 
 Bruin the Bear, Chanticleer the Cock, " came to 
 
68 THE SPRINGS OF ROMANCE IN 
 
 stay," till the classical interregnum. After the revival 
 of romance they returned ; so that, now, in the 
 Jungle of Kipling and the Farmyard of Rostand, 
 they occupy the whole of the stage. 
 
 Fantastic Symbols 
 
 It is the note of Romance to welcome in 
 literature much else beside man : with delight 
 when that is possible, and, when it is not, with 
 courage. In Romance man disputes his place with 
 other living beings and elemental forces without 
 life. He receives the impression of scenery, and 
 guesses at dim " dominations and powers " that 
 baffle his mundane progress and cloud his longing 
 for eternity. All these Romance accepts for their 
 strangeness; and, I would add, for their truth. 
 
 When their strangeness is exorbitant, Romance, 
 in order to make their truth intelligible, resorts to 
 allegory and fable, and even to fantastic symbols 
 
THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE 69 
 
 that seem ludicrous. We laugh, with Cervantes, at 
 the giants and dragons and warlocks of Romance. 
 It is our human privilege. Man is divided by 
 laughter from all that surrounds him. When we 
 have done laughing, we detect in these symbols an 
 attempt — frantic if you please — to explain realities 
 that are coeval with man; that, indeed, preceded 
 his origin and may outlast his existence. Man s 
 domination, even of this earth, is more partial than 
 would appear from the unromantic presentment of 
 his case. There are forces in nature, by com- 
 parison with whose gigantic strength man's efforts 
 are puny. There are enemies to his well-being 
 that, like dragons, are not only dangerous but 
 loathsome. There are subtleties in the universe 
 that, like wizards, bewilder and deride his intelli- 
 gence. Even to-day, enlightened as we are by 
 popular science, we may recall, without : contempt, 
 the wild allegories by which other men, in other 
 
70 THE SPRINGS OF ROMANCE IN 
 
 ages, tried to explain the overpowering, and grisly, 
 and inscrutable; we may remember with human- 
 kindness that those who invented the symbols of 
 horror, invented also a vague belief that horror 
 can be conquered by a charm in the hand of the 
 Uttle child. 
 
 Universal Affinity 
 
 The reaction of the mind, when confronted 
 with the strange, is, in some sort, a recognition 
 of ignored realities. Romance is an act of recog- 
 nition. When Shakespeare attacks the reality of 
 Time, as if suggesting that, round Time, there is 
 Eternity, in which all things and all men are co- 
 existent and co-eternal, we feel that a rare mind is 
 soaring through a rarer atmosphere to the extreme 
 verge of the comprehensible. When Tennyson 
 makes Ulysses say, " I am a part of all that I have 
 met," we feel that this is a dark saying. Yet there 
 
THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE 71 
 
 are moments when it seems true of each one of us. 
 Its truth strikes as a forgotten face strikes by its 
 strange famiHarity. At such moments we under- 
 stand that darker utterance, " The kingdom of God 
 is within you." A sense of universal affinity comes 
 into literature when men are no longer content 
 with the mythologies, or philosophies, of their own 
 time and people. Then they turn, with a kindly 
 curiosity, to other nations and other ages. 
 
 " Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages 
 To feme hah)es couthe in sondry londes" 
 
 — Chaucer's Prologue. 
 
 Romance revives, and, extending her welcome to 
 the strange, discovers in it something which has 
 always been latent in man^s mind, although starved 
 by convention. The old northern mythology, with 
 its twilight of the gods, and ceaseless battle against 
 a doom of eternal cold, is not so absurd in the 
 twentieth century as amid the certainties of two 
 
72 THE SPRINGS OF ROMANCE 
 
 hundred years ago. We are taught to expect that 
 catastrophe by popular science, the mythology of 
 our day. But our day is also the age of the 
 Romantic Revival, and in it we imitate, uncon- 
 sciously, the attitude adopted towards the strange 
 by our forefathers in the first Romantic epoch. We 
 turn, as they did, to all mankind's imaginings, 
 not for comfort, but for human fellowship, in the 
 great Romance of Man's adventure through the 
 Universe. We take our part in that quest, with a 
 brave astonishment. In Romantic literature we 
 listen to the camp- songs of our comrades, and 
 " Greet the unseen with a cheerT 
 
 PRINTED AT THE EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 T. AND A. CONSTABLE, PRINTERS TO HIS MAJESTY 
 

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