conquerors at the
battle of Hastings still reigns paramount.

Moreover, the new possessors of the English country were fond of tales
and short stories, either moving or amusing, in which a word would make
the reader laugh or make him thoughtful; but where there was no tirade,
no declamation, no loud emphasis, no vague speculation, a style of
writing quite unknown to the islanders and contrary to their genius.
When they returned of an evening to their huge and impregnable castles,
in perfect security and in good humour, they liked to hear recited
stories in prose, some of which are still extant and will never be read
without pleasure: the story of Floire and Blanchefleur, for instance, or
perhaps, also that of Aucassin, who preferred "his gentle love" to
paradise even more unconcernedly than the lover in the old song rejected
the gift of "Paris la grand ville;" of Aucassin, in whose adventures the
Almighty interposes, not in the manner of the Jehovah of the Bible, but
as "God who loveth lovers;"[6] and where Nicolete is so very beautiful
that the touch of her fair hands is enough to heal sick people.
According to the author the same wonder is performed by the tale itself;
it heals sorrow:

"Sweet the song, the story sweet,
There is no man hearkens it,
No man living 'neath the sun,
So outwearied, so foredone,
Sick and woful, worn and sad,
But is healed, but is glad
'Tis so sweet."[7]

So speaks the author, and since his time the performance of the same
miracle has been the aim of the many tale-writers of all countries; they
have not all of them failed.

The fusion of these two sorts of stories, the epic-romance and the tale,
produced long afterwards in every country of Europe the novel as we know
it now. To the former, the novel owes more especially its width of
subject, its wealth of incident, its occasionally dignified gait; to the
second, its delicacy of observation, its skill in expression of detail,
its naturalness, its realism. If we care to examine them closely, we
shall find in the greater number of those familiar tragi-comedies, which
are the novels of our own day, discernible traces of their twofold and
far-off origin.

II.

The first result of the diffusion in England, after the Conquest, of a
new literature full of southern inventions and gaieties, and loves, and
follies, was the silencing of the native singers. This silence lasted
for a hundred years; the ver