iod applying its
transmuting force to the Romance of the Round Table. The date of Sir
Thomas Mallory, who lived under Edward IV, is something earlier than
that of the great Italian romances; he appears, too, to have been on the
whole content with the humble offices of a compiler and a chronicler,
and we may conceive that his spirit and diction are still older than his
date. The consequence is, that we are brought into more immediate and
fresher contact with the original forms of this romance. So that, as
they present themselves to us, the Carlovingian cycle is the child of
the latest middle age, while the Arthurian represents the earlier. Much
might be said on the differences which have thus arisen, and on those
which may be due to a more northern and more southern extraction
respectively. Suffice it to say that the Romance of the Round Table, far
less vivid and brilliant, far ruder as a work of skill and art, has more
of the innocence, the emotion, the transparency, the inconsistency of
childhood. Its political action is less specifically Christian than that
of the rival scheme, its individual more so. It is more directly and
seriously aimed at the perfection of man. It is more free from gloss and
varnish; it tells its own tale with more entire simplicity. The ascetic
element is more strongly, and at the same time more quaintly, developed.
It has a higher conception of the nature of woman; and like the Homeric
poems, appears to eschew exhibiting her perfections in alliance with
warlike force and exploits. So also love, while largely infused into the
story, is more subordinate to the exhibition of other qualities. Again,
the Romance of the Round Table bears witness to a more distinct and
keener sense of sin: and on the whole, a deeper, broader, and more manly
view of human character, life, and duty. It is in effect more like what
the Carlovingian cycle might have been had Dante moulded it. It hardly
needs to be added that it is more mythical, inasmuch as Arthur of the
Round Table is a personage, we fear, wholly doubtful, though not
impossible; while the broad back of the historic Charlemagne, like
another Atlas, may well sustain a world of mythical accretions. This
slight comparison, be it remarked, refers exclusively to what may be
termed the latest "redactions" of the two cycles of romance. Their early
forms, in the lays of troubadours, and in the pages of the oldest
chroniclers, offer a subject of profound interest, an