hough still the Granicus does
not appear; the return to Greece and the capture of Thebes have their
place; and the Athens-Aristotle business is also to some extent
critically treated. Then the last battle with Darius comes in: and his
death concludes the first part of the piece in about five thousand
lines. It is noticeable that the "Foray of Gaza" is entirely omitted;
and indeed, as above remarked, it bears every sign of being a separate
poem.

The second part deals with "Pore"--in other words, with the Indian
expedition and its wonders. These are copied from the French, but by
no means slavishly. The army is, on the whole, even worse treated by
savage beasts and men on its way to India than in the original; but
the handling, including the Candace episodes, follows the French more
closely than in the first part. The fighting at "Defur," however, like
that at Gaza, is omitted; and the wilder and more mystical and
luxuriant parts of the story--the three Fountains, the Sirens, the
flower-maidens, and the like--are either omitted likewise or handled
more prosaically.[81]

[Footnote 81: Dr Koelbing, who in combination of philological and
literary capacity is second among Continental students of romance only
to M. Gaston Paris, appears to have convinced himself of the existence
of a great unknown English poet who wrote not only _Alisaundre_, but
_Arthour and Merlin_, _Richard Coeur de Lion_, and other pieces. I
should much like to believe this.]

One of the most curious things about this poem is that every
division--divisions of which Weber made chapters--begins by a short
gnomic piece in the following style:--

"Day spryng is jolyf tide.
He that can his tyme abyde,
Oft he schal his wille bytyde.
Loth is grater man to chyde."

[Sidenote: _Characteristics._]

The treatment of the Alexander story thus well illustrates one way of
the mediaeval mind with such things--the way of combining at will
incongruous stories, of accepting with no, or with little, criticism
any tale of wonder that it happened to find in books, of using its own
language, applying its own manners, supposing its own clothing,
weapons, and so forth to have prevailed at any period of history. And
further, it shows how the _geste_ theory--the theory of working out
family connections and stories of ancestors and successors--could not
fail to be applied to any subject that at all lent itself to such
treatment. But, on the other hand, this