POPULAR ROMA.NCES OF THE MIDDLE AGES.* IF Sir Thomas Malory

and the other compilers of chivalrous romance whose works are abridged in this volume could be recalled to life and speak with their latest readers, they would no doubt find it hard to believe that the tales they set down with faithful simplicity were as true in nature as they are impossible in history. We of the nineteenth century, hardened in accuracy of knowledge and arrogant in our power over nature, look at the changes of day and night as a very commonplace exhi- bition. We should hardly know what we have to say to them, if Artemus Ward bad not told us. The earth goes round on its axis in twenty-four hours, subject to the Constitution of the United States,—that is the modern way of looking at it.

• Popular Romances of Me Meddle Ages. By George W. Cox, NA., and Eutaw Hinton Jones. London: Longman. 1871 The ancients looked at the same things in their way, before they had gastronomical clocks and constitutions, and the sight of their eyes

took life on their lips, and became Vedic hymns, cycles of Homeric legend, sagas, romances, fairy tales ; an endless store- house of heroic and beautiful imagery, adored with various worship by men of all ages and conditions ; with the solemn incense of temples, with applause of listening crowds in the market-place, with smiles and wonder of children, and now, after centuries of dispersion through Europe and Asia, this marvellous family is gathered together to renew the forgotten brotherhood by grave scholars, who set out never thinking that they should have to pursue their science into fairyland. And so from these old tales is woven a veil of rich enchanted colours for the serene front of knowledge, while her charm wakes in the tales a life that had long slumbered, brings harmony and meaning out of seeming follies, and gives a new perfection to their beauties. In this, as in other directions, time shows that Science and Poetry are really at one, though their ways seem to lie apart.

It is not so very long ago that it would have seemed wholly out of place for Mr. Cox, or any one else, to introduce a new collection of mediaeval romances, intended to be a popular book, with an essay on comparative mythology. From our present point of view, there does not seem anything extraordinary in it. La this volume the same course is followed as in the tales from the Norse, for which Mr. Cox also wrote a preface the Christmas before last. The essay and the stories are quite separate, so that provision is made for the possible case of a reader who likes romances and does not like comparative mythology, and for the almost impos- sible case of a reader interested in comparative mythology who does not care for the. romances. Both would, in our opinion, be wrong. The person who neglects the stories for the mythology is so unlikely to exist that there is no need to offer him any exhorta- tions, but those who declare war against the mythology as a disparagement to the stories will probably be not infrequent. We can imagine such an one turning away in righteous anger from Mr. Cox and all his works. A pretty thing, forsooth ! that all these deeds of love and valour, all these perils and wonders, should be summed up in dawn, and noon-tide, and sunset. Such a demand on faith is almost a personal affront. Who is Mr. Cox, that Kine Arthur and all the rest of them should be turned into the sun for him? Shall the King, and Sir Tristram, and Sir Lancelot be nothing but the same actor under different masks, and shall the heathen foes and the dragons slain by the heroes become mere clouds or marshes ? Nay, it has been proclaimed months ago that if this kind of licence is once allowed, there is no knowing where it will stop. The Edin- burgh Reviewer stood aghast at the Mythology of the Aryan Nations, and denounced Mr. Cox as capable of plotting treason against the characters of Shakespeare. If the Trojan war is not sacred to him, he will want Othello to be the sun next. To which Mr. Cox replies with great equanimity in a note to this preface that this is a point he will not speak upon, for he has not thought about it ; he prefers to leave Shakespeare's plays to other inquirers, but has little doubt there are mythical elements in some of them.

A few explanations, which the comparative mythologists offer plainly enough to readers who have patience, show, however, that their doctrine is not one of lawless revolution. They do not want to subvert or meddle with any ascertained historical fact. What they deal with is that element which avowedly has no foundation in fact in the stories told of personages whether historical, or doubtful, or clearly legendary. Possibly there was a real King Arthur and a real Achilles. Mr. Freeman thinks, on the whole, it ie as likely as not that a Welsh prince called Arthur did Me in Somersetshire and fight the English. But it is quite certain that the real King Arthur was not girt with a scabbard which saved him from losing blood, though he were never so sore wounded, nor can it be maintained that the real Achilles was invulnerable except in the heel. The position of the comparative mythologists is this. We find large masses of appar- ently disjointed legendary matter pervaded by certain striking resemblances. Different sets of legends are so much alike in their tenor, and even in particular incidents, that we must suppose them to have been dispersed from a common centre, or at least to have been founded on identical motives. Our hypothesis furnishes an intelligible common origin for all these: moreover it discovers a primitive meaning and fitness in many traits which otherwise are absurd and repulsive. The test of its worth is that.it explains things which no other supposition has explained ; and then there is nothing unreasonable in applying it as the most easy and natural clue to riddles for which other answers might possibly be found. A good example of the method is given by Mr. Cox's remarks on the constant appearance of poisoned weapons in the romances of chivalry (p. 39), though we confess that we do not feel the difficulty he does in admitting in this case the literal interpretation :—

" On this fact it would be difficult to lay too great stress. Whatever may be said for African savages or even for the Acbaians of the Greek heroic age, it can never be maintained that the employment of poisoned weapons is a fit work for Christian chivalry, or that the fact of their being so used is credible. But what is to be said if wo find this practice avowed without shame in the heroic legends of almost all lands? Poisoned arrows are used by Herakles, and by him bequeathed to

Philoctetes, who with one of them inflicts the death-wound of Paris

Nay, they do not scruple to make use of poison in other forms If we absolutely refuse to believe in the historical employment of such methods in ancient or modern Europe (and we must refuse to believe it of oar own land in any Christian age), how are the legends which speak of this employment to be explained P The negation of their historical character at once supplies the solution of the problem, by banishing it from the land of living men to the regions of mist and space. The poisoned spears are the piercing rays of the sun ; the poisoned robes are the fiery clouds which eat out his life as he sinks at his journey's end in the west."

We have no space to cite Mr. Cox's observations on the story of Hamlet, in which he shows ground for tracing an affinity with the

more clearly mythical old English tale of Havelok, given in this volume.

So much as to the mythological introduction. Of the romances which follow it, the principal one is " The Story of King Arthur and his Knights," an abridgment of Sir Thomas Malory. The condensation is very well done by Mr. Cox, and the story may be acceptable in this form to many who would not bear with the garrulity of the old romancer. But one cannot help feeling that the quaint simplicity of the original suffers when the action is

hastened and the dialogue compressed into narration. Take, for instance, the short episode of " King Ryons," which in the Morte d 'Arthur makes the twenty-fourth chapter. In Mr.. Cox's abridg-

ment it is reduced to this paragraph :—

" Then went Arthur to Caerleon ; and thither came messengers from King Ryons, who said, 'Eleven kings have done me homage, and with their beards I have trimmed a mantle. Send me now thy beard, for there lacks yet one to the finishing of my mantle.' Then answered Arthur, and said, ' Go tell your master my beard is full young yet to make a trimming of it ; but yet a little while, and he shall do me homage on his knees.' " This is good straightforward English, but we miss the picturesque- ness of King Arthur's reply as given by Sir Thomas Malory :— " 'Well,' said King Arthur,' thou hart said thy message, which is the most villainous and lewdest message that ever man heard sent to a king, Also thou mayest see my beard, full young yet for to make a pnrfel of ; but tell thou the king this : I owe him no homage, nor none of mine elders, but or it be long, he shall do to me homage on both his knees, or else he shall lose his head, by the faith of my body ; for this is the moat shamefullest message that ever I heard speak of. I see well tho king met never yet with a worshipful man : but tell him I will have his head without he do homage unto me.' " So, again, if we compare the accounts of King Arthur receiving

Excalibur, we find that little touches which heighten the interest in the original are perforce dropped out. Not that the artistic objection to condensing a story of this kind depends on the in- trinsic value of the omitted details. The result of such a process is almost inevitably to make it seem as if the story-teller were in a hurry, and that is in flat contradiction to the whole spirit and manner of antique romance. However, there was no other way of bringing the history of Prince Arthur within the compass of an average reader's patience. Mr. Cox has executed his difficult task, on the whole, with excellent judgment, and he is not responsible for the drawbacks inherent in the undertaking.

Mr. Enatace Hinton Jones, the contributor of the other tales in this volume, also deserves high praise for the manner in which he has done his part. He has succeeded in giving to his style an apt simplicity which is neither too modern nor too archaic, and in the more elevated passages he fully brings out the force and beauty of his themes. The stories of " Olger the Dane" and "Roland" appear to us the best, but all are good. The appearance of Sir Tristram in this volume is especially opportune, as it enables us to compare Mr. Tennyson's last idyll with a distinct and independ-

ent version of the same legend. And here we cannot help observing that the depreciation of the Idylls of the King which is not uncommon is due in great part to ignorance of the extent to

which Mr. Tennyson has refined and transformed his materials.

People sometimes talk as if he had nothing to do but put the stories into verse as he found them. He has really constructed a great harmonious poem out of a chaos of ballad and romance. There is a sad irony in the close of " Olger the Dane," when we read it in these days :—

" When men fail in the land of the Franks in time of sore distress, when her armies fall upon the field, and the spirit of her people is all broken in the battle-flight, when there is none to lead her children against the stranger and the spoiler of her land, Morgan le Fay will pity her and raise up her old champion, and the Dane shall come back on his mighty battle-horse to trample down the enemy. Then shall the Franks again shout Diger the Dane!' and like an angry flood sweep down upon the foe.''

But Olger the Dane has not come back. Perhaps he suspects that if he did, M. Thiers would take the first opportunity to shoot him.