as the original text has it (though, in
fact, Rome proper has little to do with the most important examples of
the class), adds very importantly to the development of romance, and
through that, of novel. Its bulk is considerable, and its examples have
interest of various kinds. But for us this interest is concentrated
upon, if not exclusively confined to, the two great groups (undertaken
by, and illustrated in, the three great literary languages of the
earlier Middle Ages, and, as usual, most remarkably and originally in
French) of the Siege of Troy and the life of Alexander. It should be
almost enough to say of the former that it introduced,[17] with
practically nothing but the faintest suggestion from really classical
sources, the great romance-novel of the loves of Troilus and Cressida to
the world's literature; and of the second, that it gives us the first
instance of the infusion of Oriental mystery and marvel that we can
discern in the literature of the West. For details about the books which
contain these things, their authors and their probable sources and
development, the reader must, as in other cases, look elsewhere.[18] It
is only our business here to say something about the general nature of
the things themselves and about the additions that they made to the
capital, and in some cases almost to the "plant," of fiction.

[Sidenote: _Troilus._]

That the Troilus and Cressida romance, with its large provision and its
more large suggestion of the accomplished love-story, evolved from older
tale-tellers by Boccaccio and Chaucer and Henryson and Shakespeare, is
not a pure creation of the earlier Middle Ages, few people who patiently
attend to evidence can now believe. Even in the wretched summaries of
the Tale of Troy by Dictys and Dares (which again no such person as the
one just described can put very early), the real novel-interest--even
the most slender romance-interest--is hardly present at all. Benoit de
Sainte-More in the twelfth century may not have actually invented this;
it is one of the principles of this book, as of all that its writer has
written, that the quest of the inventor of a story is itself the vainest
of inventions. But it is certain that nobody hitherto has been able to
"get behind him," and it is still more certain that he has given enough
base for the greater men who followed to build upon. If he cannot be
credited with the position of the pseudo-Callisthenes (see below) in
reference to