cters he surveys,
or the events or evils which he experiences.' Yet Dunlop, who examined
the romances of chivalry at some length in his 'History of Fiction,'
seems never to have suspected that these tales were written with any
other intention than to amuse or that the events which they related were
looked upon by their readers as other than facts. For Arthur he has scant
respect, 'nor,' says he, 'as we advance, do we find him possessed of a
single quality, except strength and courage, to excite respect or
interest.' Surely the remark of one who must have been dead to all sense
of imagination and romance--although purporting to be an authority upon
them! The teaching of the whole Arthurian cycle of romances was 'that
noble men may see and lerne the noble actes of chyualrye, the Ientyl and
vertuous dedes that somme Knyghtes vsed in tho dayes, by whyche they came
to honour; and how they that were vycious were punysshed and ofte put to
shame and rebuke.' The quest of the Holy Grail, motive of the most
exquisite series of mystic tales that has ever been written, was, we are
expressly informed, 'the hygh way of our Lord Jhesu Cryst, and the way of
a true good lyver, not that of synners and of mysbelievers.' Godfrey de
Bouillon, the hero of another cycle, was 'moult preudhomme et sage et
moult aymant Dieu et gens d'esglise,' as we read in 'Le Triomphe des Neuf
Preux' (folio, Abbeville 1487). Preposterous tales? Perhaps; yet, as
regards their moral side, not suffering greatly by comparison with our
modern fiction.

Those whose reading is confined to the literature of to-day can have no
idea of the influence which these romances had upon the lives of our
forefathers. It was not merely a system of morality which they taught, it
was a civilisation of a very high order. When we are inclined to mock at
these 'preposterous tales' we should never forget that to them we owe a
debt so immense that we are lost in the contemplation of it. It cannot be
gainsaid that it was as much by the study and teaching of these romances
as it was by the spirit which gave them birth, that our ancestors came to
mould their lives in such a sort as to influence the civilisation of the
whole of the western world.

That the romances were the outcome of chivalry cannot be urged, though
doubtless in a later age they helped to keep the spirit of knighthood
alive. Edward the Black Prince, the very model of mediaeval chivalry,
avowedly studied the ancient romanc