the Alexander story, he may fairly share that of his
contemporary Geoffrey of Monmouth, if not even of Nennius, as regards
that of Arthur. The situation, or rather the group of situations, is of
the most promising and suggestive kind, negatively and positively. In
the first place the hero and heroine are persons about whom the great
old poets of the subject have said little or nothing; and what an
immense advantage this is all students of the historical novel of the
last hundred years know. In the second, the way in which they are put in
action (or ready for action) is equally satisfactory, or let us say
stimulating. In a great war a prince loves a noble lady, who by birth
and connections belongs to the enemy, and after vicissitudes, which can
be elaborated according to the taste and powers of the romancer, gains
her love. But the course of this love is interrupted by her surrender or
exchange to the enemy themselves; her beauty attracts, nay has already
attracted, the fancy of one of the enemy's leaders, and being not merely
a coquette but a light-o'-love[19] she admits his addresses. Her
punishment follows or does not follow, is accomplished during the life
of her true lover or not, according again to the taste and fancy of the
person who handles the story. But the scheme, even at its simplest, is
novel-soil: marked out, matured, manured, and ready for cultivation, and
the crops which can be grown on it depend entirely upon the skill of the
cultivator.

For all this some would, as has been said above, see sufficient
suggestion in the Greek Romance. I have myself known the examples of
that Romance for a very long time and have always had a high opinion of
it; but except what has been already noticed--the prominence of the
heroine--I can see little or nothing that the Mediaeval romance could
possibly owe to it, and as a matter of fact hardly anything else in
common between the two. In the last, and to some extent the most
remarkable (though very far from the best if not nearly the worst), of
the Greek Romances, the _Hysminias and Hysmine_ of Eustathius, we have
indeed got to a point in advance, taking that word in a peculiar sense,
even of Troilus at its most accomplished, that is to say, the Marinism
or Marivaudage, if not even the Meredithese, of language and sentiment.
But _Hysminias and Hysmine_ is probably not older than Benoit de
Sainte-More's story, and as has just been said, Renaissance, nay
post-Renaissance, no