the Bay of Biscay to the Jordan. This great lover of learning and adventure was, for a time, the virtual 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 development. 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 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 surrounded 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.' 1

1 Brome's Antipodes, in Lamb's Specimens.

"Signor," fait Alixandre, "je vus voel demander,
Se des merveilles d'Inde me saves rien conter."
Cil li ont respondu : Se tu vius escouter
Ja te dirons merveilles, s'es poras esprover.

La sus en ces desers pues ii Arbres trover
Qui c pies ont de haut, et de grossor sunt per.
Li Solaus et La Lune les ont fait si serer

Que sevent tous languages et entendre et parler." 1

In a thirteenth-century version, we witness the first appearance of The Nine Worthies '-Joshua, David, and Maccabæus, for the Jews; Hector, Alexander, and Cæsar, 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 Love's Labour's Lost. Meanwhile they bulk largely in literature, and were painted by Perugino. A hundred years before the antics of Holopherneş, 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 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 supposititious defender of Troy, Dares Phrygian, and a nonexistent besieger, Dictys Cretensis. It produces no

1 Chanson d'Alixandre, ed. 1861, Dinan, p. 357; Yule's Marco Polo, i. 122.

effect till, in 1160, 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 expense :

:

'Ce que dist Daires et Ditis
I avons si retrait et mis.'

And away goes the development of Romance, till the love of Troilus and Briseîda, which Benedict invented, after figuring in Boccaccio, supplies the theme of Chaucer's great romantic poem, and of Shakespeare's play. In the course of the transition Homer's Briseis becomes Shakespeare's Cressida.

'The skilful painting made for Priam's Troy,'

which Shakespeare weaves into Lucrece (1. 13661559), and the speech required by Hamlet from the players, and Lorenzo's ecstasy (Merchant of Venice, v. 1),

'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, methinks, mounted the Troyan walls,
And sigh'd 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 Æneas. So, in close succession to the Romance

of Troy, we get a romantic Æneid (Roman d'Enée), 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 Eneas, who are none other than the nations over whom Henry held sway

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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 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

Que ne fait Londres ne Peitiers.'

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 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 suffices 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 partit 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 troubadours, the masters of rhyme, and trouvères, 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 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 trouvères, 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 inundated all Europe with the legends of Arthur and his knights; incidentally submerging the fame of