ourtesy. When Guinevere
deserts him, and some of his knights are slain, his remark--not
whispered into the ear of a confidant, but uttered aloud in the
presence of all around him--is, "I am sorrier for my good knights'
loss than for the loss of my fair Queen, for queens I might have
enow." Such a sentiment, expressed in public, does not seem quite up
to our modern standard of courteous, or even civilised, conduct, and
yet here we have the sentiments of the Prince of Chivalry, as
conceived by the poets of the thirteenth century. So it is obvious
that before passing judgment upon the standard of life of the mediaeval
woman, we must endeavour to arrive at the truth by thinking and living
in imagination on the same plane, as near as may be, as she did.

Then again, it is largely owing to certain stories in the Middle Ages
that the women of those times have been defamed. If we consider the
sources and the transcribers of these stories, we shall perhaps find a
reason for their distorted outlines, filled in with so much
imperfectly understood detail. Many of these tales originated in the
East, and particularly in India, where the conditions of domestic life
led to and favoured intrigue, and many of them also were mere
allegory, in which the Eastern sought to hide great truths. These the
less meditative Western interpreted literally, mistaking the outward
form for that which it concealed. So in passing to the West, Eastern
ideas and Eastern exaggeration, misconstrued, became caricature.
Moreover, the compilers of these stories were often monks or minstrels
who vied with each other for popular favour, the monk introducing into
his legends material which he hoped would rival the often shameless
outpourings of the minstrel, whilst the minstrel, for his part, tried
to adorn his story with some moral. Naturally neither class of such
purveyors was in the least capable of judging woman with respect, or
indeed of judging woman at all.

On the other hand, however, it must be remembered that there are
stories that tell a very different tale, a tale of self-sacrifice and
devotion in face of grievous trial, as, for instance, that of Eric and
Enide, sung by Chretien of Troyes, and made familiar to us by
Tennyson's poem of "Geraint and Enid." It is impossible that such a
conception should have been the mere outcome of the poet's
imagination, since a poet, whilst he may transform, focuses and
reflects the ideas of his time. In truth, we fin