ductions, but also from
intermediate variants and expansions of these. The most obvious of these
discrepancies is the singular amplification of the supernatural
elements. Of course these were not absent in the older romance
literature, especially in the Arthurian cycle. But there they had
certain characteristics which might almost deserve the adjective
"critical"--little criticism proper as there was in the Middle Ages.
They were very generally religious, and they almost always had what may
be called a poetic restraint about them. The whole Graal-story is
deliberately modelled on Scriptural suggestions; the miracle of
reconciliation and restoration which concludes _Amis and Amiles_ is the
work of a duly commissioned angel. There are giants, but they are
introduced moderately and equipped in consonance. The Saint's Life,
which, as it has been contended, exercised so large an influence on the
earlier romance, carried the nature, the poetry, the charm of its
supernatural elements into the romance itself.

[Sidenote: Extravagance in incident, nomenclature, etc.]

In the _Amadis_ cycle and in romances like _Arthur of Little Britain_
all this undergoes a change--not by any means for the better. What has
been unkindly, but not perhaps unjustly, called the "conjuror's
supernatural" takes the place of the poet's variety. One of the
personages of the _Knight of the Sun_ is a "Bedevilled Faun," and it is
really too much not to say that most of such personages are bedevilled.
In _Arthur of_ (so much the Lesser) _Britain_ there is, if I remember
rightly, a giant whose formidability partly consists in his spinning
round on a sort of bedevilled music-stool: and his class can seldom be
met with without three or seven heads, a similarly large number of legs
and hands, and the like. This sort of thing has been put down, not
without probability, to the Oriental suggestion which would come so
readily into Spain. It may be so or it may not. But it certainly imports
an element of puerility into romance, which is regrettable, and it
diminishes the dignity and the poetry of the things rather lamentably.
Whether it diminishes, and still more whether it originally diminished
the _readability_ of these same things, is quite another question.

Closely connected with it is the fancy for barbaric names of great
length and formidable sound, such as Famongomadan, Pintiquinestra, and
the like--a trait which, if anybody pleases, may be put down to the