s. This amplification is produced partly by the
importation of incidents and episodes from other works, but still more
by indulging in constant diffuseness and what we must perhaps call
commonplaces.

[Sidenote: Spirit and Literary value of Arthurian Romances.]

From a literary point of view the prose romances rank far higher,
especially those in which Map is known or suspected to have had a hand.
The peculiarity of what may be called their atmosphere is marked. An
elaborate and romantic system of mystical religious sentiment, finding
vent in imaginative and allegorical narrative, a remarkable refinement
of manners, and a combination of delight in battle with devotion to
ladies, distinguish them. This is, in short, the romantic spirit, or, as
it is sometimes called, the spirit of chivalry; and it cannot be too
positively asserted that the Arthurian romances communicate it to
literature for the first time, and that nothing like it is found in the
classics. In the work of Map and his contemporaries it is clearly
perceivable. The most important element in this--courtesy--is, as we
have already noticed, almost entirely absent from the Chansons de
Gestes, and where it is present at all it is between persons who are
connected by some natural or artificial relation of comradeship or kin.
Nor are there many traces of it in such fragments and indications as we
possess of the Celtic originals, which may have helped in the production
of the Arthurian romances. No Carlovingian knight would have felt the
horror of Sir Bors when the Lady of Hungerford exercises her undoubted
right by flinging the body of her captive enemy on the camp of his
uncle. Even the chiefs who are presented in the _Chanson d'Antioche_ as
joking over the cannibal banquet of the Roi des Tafurs, and permitting
the dead bodies of Saracens to be torn from the cemeteries and flung
into the beleaguered city, would have very much applauded the deed.
Gallantry, again, is as much absent from the Chansons as clemency and
courtesy. The scene in _Lancelot_, where Galahault first introduces the
Queen and Lancelot to one another, contrasts in the strongest manner
with the downright courtship by which the Bellicents and Nicolettes of
the Carlovingian cycle are won. No doubt Map represents to a great
extent the sentiments of the polished court of England. But he deserves
the credit of having been the first, or almost the first, to express
such manners and sentiments, perhaps