ther, than that of the matter just
discussed with the great body of _Amadis_ romance which, at this same
time, was introduced into French literature by the translation or
adaptation of Nicolas Herberay des Essarts and his continuators. That
Herberay[121] deserves, according to the best and most catholic students
of French, a place with the just-mentioned writers among the formers or
reformers of the French tongue, is a point of some importance, but, for
us, minor. Of the controversial part of the _Amadis_ subject it must, as
in other cases, be once more unnecessary for us to say much. It may be
laid down as certain, on every principle of critical logic and research,
that the old idea of the Peninsular cycle being borrowed direct from any
French original is hopelessly absurd. There is, notoriously, no external
evidence of any such original ever having existed, and there is an
immense improbability against any such original ever having existed.
Further, the internal characteristics of the Spanish romances, though,
undoubtedly, they might never have come into existence at all but for
the French, and though there is a very slight "catch-on" of _Amadis_
itself to the universally popular Arthurian legend, are not in the least
like those of French or English. How the actual texts came into that
existence; whether, as used to be thought at first, after some expert
criticism was turned on them, the actual original was Portuguese, and
the refashioned and prolific form Spanish, is again a question utterly
beyond bounds for us. The quality of the romances themselves--their huge
vogue being a matter of fact--and the influence which they exercised on
the future development of the novel,--these are the things that concern
us, and they are quite interesting and important enough to deserve a
little attention.

[Sidenote: Their characteristics.]

What is certain is that these Spanish romances themselves--which, as
some readers at any rate may be presumed to know, branch out into
endless genealogies in the _Amadis_ and _Palmerin_ lines, besides the
more or less outside developments which fared so hardly with the censors
of Don Quixote's library--as well as the later French examples of a not
dissimilar type, the capital instance of which, for literature, is Lord
Berners's translation of _Arthur of Little Britain_--do show the most
striking differences, not merely from the original twelfth- and
thirteenth-century Charlemagne and Arthur pro