hing,
indeed, which in a way refounds or even founds the whole conception--it
establishes the heroine. There are certainly feminine persons, sometimes
not disagreeable, who play conspicuous and by no means mute or
unpractical parts in both Greek and Latin versions of the Ass-Legend;
but one can hardly call them heroines. There need be no chicane about
the application of that title to Chloe or to Chariclea, to Leucippe or
to her very remarkable rival, to Anthia or to Hysmine. Without the
heroine you can hardly have romance: the novel without her (though her
individuality may be put in commission) is an absolute impossibility.

[Sidenote: A _nexus_ of Greek and French romance? The facts about the
matter.]

The connection between these curious performances (with the much larger
number of things like them which we know to have existed) on the one
side, and the Western mediaeval romance on the other, has been at
various times matter of considerable controversy; but it need not
trouble us much here. The Greek romance was to have very great influence
on the French novel later: on the earlier composition, generally called
by the same name as itself, it would seem[7] to have had next to none.
Until we come to _Floire et Blanchefleur_ and perhaps _Parthenopex_,
things of a comparatively late stage, obviously post-Crusade, and so
necessarily exposed to, and pretty clearly patient of, Greek-Eastern
influence, there is nothing in Old French which shows even the same
kinship to the Greek stories as the Old English _Apollonius of Tyre_,
which was probably or rather certainly in the original Greek itself. The
sources of French "romance"--I must take leave to request a "truce of
God" as to the application of that term and of "epic" for present
purposes--appear to have been two--the Saint's Life and the patriotic or
family _saga_, the latter in the first place indelibly affected by the
Mahometan incursions of the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries. The
story-telling instinct--kindled by, or at first devoted to, these
subjects--subsequently fastened on numerous others. In fact almost all
was fish that came to the magic net of Romance; and though two great
subjects of ours, the "Matter of Britain" (the Arthurian Legend) and the
"Matter of Rome" (classical story generally, including the Tale of
Troy), came traditionally to rank themselves with the "Matter of France"
and with the great range of hagiology which it might have been dangerous