t Briseida, with a rather excessive politeness, and leaving him a
good deal of hope, informs him that she has already a fair friend
yonder. Whereat, as is reasonable, he is not too much discouraged. It
must be supposed that this is related to Troilus, for in the next
fight he, after Diomed has been wounded, reproaches Briseida pretty
openly. He is not wrong, for Briseida weeps at Diomed's wound, and (to
the regret and reproof of her historian, and indeed against her own
conscience) gives herself to the Greek, or determines to do so, on the
philosophical principle that Troilus is lost to her. Achilles then
kills Troilus himself, and we hear no more of the lady.

The volubility of Benoit assigns divers long speeches to Briseida, in
which favourable interpreters have seen the germ of the future
Cressid; and in which any fair critic may see the suggestion of her.
But it is little more than a suggestion. Of the full and masterly
conception of Cressid as a type of woman which was afterwards reached,
Troilus, and Diomed, and Pandarus, and the wrath of the gods were
essential features. Here Troilus is a shadow, Diomed not much more,
Pandarus non-existent, the vengeance of Love on a false lover
unthought of. Briseida, though she has changed her name, and
parentage, and status, is still, as even the patriotic enthusiasm of
MM. Moland and d'Hericault (the first who did Benoit justice)
perceives, the Briseis of Homer, a slave-girl who changes masters, and
for her own pleasure as well as her own safety is chiefly anxious to
please the master that is near. The vivifying touch was brought by
Boccaccio, and Boccaccio falls out of our story.

[Sidenote: _The_ Historia Trojana.]

But between Benoit and Boccaccio there is another personage who
concerns us very distinctly. Never was there such a case, even in the
Middle Ages, when the absence of printing, of public libraries, and of
general knowledge of literature made such things easy, of _sic vos non
vobis_ as the _Historia Trojana_ of Guido de Columnis, otherwise Guido
delle Colonne, or Guido Colonna, of Messina. This person appears to
have spent some time in England rather late in the thirteenth century;
and there, no doubt, he fell in with the _Roman de Troie_. He
wrote--in Latin, and thereby appealing to a larger audience than even
French could appeal to--a Troy-book which almost at once became widely
popular. The MSS. of it occur by scores in the principal libraries of
Europe; it