SERIES THE THIRD.—BOOK I.

I.-POEMS ON KING ARTHUR, ETC.

THE third volume being chiefly devoted to romantic subjects, may not be improperly introduced with a few slight strictures on the old Metrical Romances: a subject the more worthy attention, as it seems not to have been known to such as have written on the nature and origin of books of chivalry, that the first compositions of this kind were in verse, and usually sung to the harp.

ON THE ANCIENT METRICAL ROMANCES, ETC.

I. THE first attempts at composition among all barbarous nations are ever found to be poetry and song. The praises of their gods, and the achievements of their heroes, are usually chanted at their festival meetings. These are the first rudiments of history. It is in this manner that the savages of North America preserve the memory of past events, and the same method is known to have prevailed among our Saxon ancestors, before they quitted their German forests. The ancient Britons had their bards, and the Gothic nations their scalds or popular poets, whose business it was to record the victories of their warriors, and the genealogies of their princes, in a kind of narrative songs, which were committed to memory, and delivered down from one reciter to another. So long as poetry continued a distinct profession, and while the bard, or scald, was a regular and stated officer in the prince's court, these men are thought to have performed the functions of the historian pretty faithfully; for though their narrations would be apt to receive a good deal of embellishment, they are supposed to have had at the bottom so much of truth as to serve for the basis of more regular annals. At least succeeding historians have taken up with the relations of these rude men, and, for want of more authentic records, have agreed to allow them the credit of true history.

After letters began to prevail, and history assumed a more stable form, by being committed to plain simple prose, these songs of the scalds or bards began to be more amusing than useful; and in proportion as it became their business chiefly to entertain and delight, they gave more and more into embellishment, and set off their recitals with such marvellous fictions as were calculated to captivate gross and ignorant minds. Thus began stories of adventures with giants and dragons, and witches and enchanters, and all the monstrous extravagances of wild imagination, unguided by judgment and uncorrected by art.

This seems to be the true origin of that species of romance which so long celebrated feats of chivalry, and which, at first in metre and afterwards in prose, was the entertainment of our ancestors, in common with their contemporaries on the Continent, till the satire of Cervantes, or rather the increase of knowledge and classical literature,

drove them off the stage, to make room for a more refined species of fiction, under the name of French Romances, copied from the Greek.

That our old romances of chivalry may be derived in a lineal descent from the ancient historical songs of the Gothic bards and scalds, will be shown below, and indeed appears the more evident, as many of those songs are still preserved in the north, which exhibit all the seeds of chivalry before it became a solemn institution. "Chivalry, as a distinct military order, conferred in the way of investiture, and accompanied with the solemnity of an oath, and other ceremonies," was of later date, and sprung out of the feudal constitution. But the ideas of chivalry prevailed long before in all the Gothic nations, and may be discovered a sin embryo in the customs, manners, and opinions of every branch of that people. That fondness of going in quest of adventures, that spirit of challenging to single combat, and that respectful complaisance shown to the fair sex (so different from the manners of the Greeks and Romans), all are of Gothic origin, and may be traced up to the earliest times among all the northern nations. These existed long before the feudal ages, though they were called forth and strengthened in a peculiar manner under that constitution, and at length arrived to their full maturity in the times of the Crusades, so replete with romantic adventures.*

Even the common arbitrary fictions of romance were (as is hinted above) most of them familiar to the ancient scalds of the north long before the time of the Crusades. They believed the existence of giants and dwarfs; they entertained opinions not unlike the more modern notion of fairies; they were strongly possessed with the belief of spells and enchantment; and were fond of inventing combats with dragons and monsters.

The opinion therefore seems very untenable, which some learned and ingenious men have entertained, that the turn for chivalry, and the taste for that species of romantic fiction were caught by the Spaniards from the Arabians or Moors after their invasion of Spain, and from the Spaniards transmitted to the bards of Armorica, and thus diffused through Britain, France, Italy, Germany, and the north. For it seems utterly incredible that one rude people should adopt a peculiar taste and manner of writing or thinking from another, without borrowing at the same time any of their particular stories and fables, without appearing to know anything of their heroes, history, laws, and religion. When the Romans began to adopt and imitate the

*The seeds of chivalry sprung up so naturally out of the original manners and opinions of the northern nations, that it is not credible they arose so late as after the establishment of the feudal system, much less the Crusades; nor, again, that the romances of chivalry were transmitted to other nations through the Spaniards from the Moors and Arabians. Had this been the case, the first French romances of chivalry would have been on Moorish or at least Spanish subjects; whereas the most ancient stories of this kind, whether in prose or verse, whether in Italian, French, English, etc., are chiefly on the subjects of Charlemagne and the Paladins, or of our British Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, etc., being evidently borrowed from the fabulous chronicles of the supposed Archbishop Turpin, and of Jeffery of Monmouth. Not but some of the oldest and most popular French romances are also on Norman subjects, as Richard Sans-peur, Robert le Diable, etc.; whereas I do not recollect so much as one in which the scene is laid in Spain, much less among the Moors, or descriptive of Mahometan manners. Even in Amadis de Gaul, said to have been the first romance printed in Spain, the scene is laid in Gaul and Britain; and the manners are French, which plainly shows from what school this species of fabling was learnt and transmitted to the southern nations of Europe.

Grecian literature, they immediately naturalized all the Grecian fables, histories, and religious stories, which became as familiar to the poets of Rome as of Greece itself; whereas all the old writers of chivalry, and of that species of romance, whether in prose or verse, whether of the northern nations or of Britain, France, and Italy, not excepting Spain itself,* appear utterly unacquainted with whatever relates to the Mahometan nations. Thus with regard to their religion, they constantly represent them as worshipping idols, as paying adoration to a golden image of Mahomet, or else they confound them with the ancient pagans. And indeed in all other respects they are so grossly ignorant of the customs, manners, and opinions of every branch of that people, especially of their heroes, champions, and local stories, as almost amounts to a demonstration that they did not imitate them in their songs or romances: for as to dragons, serpents, necromancies, why should these be thought only derived from the Moors in Spain so late as after the eighth century, since notions of this kind appear too familiar to the northern scalds, and enter too deeply into all the northern mythology, to have been transmitted to the unlettered Scandinavians, from so distant a country, at so late a period? If they may not be allowed to have brought these opinions with them in their original migrations from the north of Asia, they will be far more likely to have borrowed them from the Latin poets after the Roman conquests in Gaul, Britain, Germany, etc. For I believe one may challenge the maintainers of this opinion to produce any Arabian poem or history that could possibly have been then known in Spain, which resembles the old Gothic romances of chivalry half so much as the Metamorphoses of Ovid.

But we well know that the Scythian nations, situate in the countries about Pontus, Colchis, and the Euxine Sea, were in all times infamous for their magic arts and as Odin and his followers are said to have come precisely from those parts of Asia, we can readily account for the prevalence of fictions of this sort among the Gothic nations of the north, without fetching them from the Moors in Spain, who for many centuries after their irruption lived in a state of such constant hostility with the unsubdued Spanish Christians, whom they chiefly pent up in the mountains, as gave them no chance of learning their music, poetry, or stories; and this, together with the religious hatred of the latter for their cruel invaders, will account for the utter ignorance of the old Spanish romancers in whatever relates to the Mahometan nations, although so nearly their own neighbours.

On the other hand, from the local customs and situations, from the known manners and opinions of the Gothic nations in the north, we can easily account for all the ideas of chivalry and its peculiar fictions. For, not to mention their distinguished respect for the fair sex, so different from the manners of the Mahometan nations, their national and domestic history so naturally assumes all the wonders of this species of fabling, that almost all their historical narratives appear regular romances.

One

* The little narrative songs on Morisco subjects, which the Spaniards have in great abundance, and which they call peculiarly Romances, have nothing in common with their proper romances (or histories) of chivalry, which they call Historias de Cavallerias. These are evidently imitations of the French, and show a great ignorance of Moorish manners; and with regard to the Morisco or song romances, they do not seem of very great antiquity; few of them appear, from their subjects, much earlier than the reduction of Granada, in the fifteenth century; from which period, I believe, may be plainly traced among the Spanish writers a more perfect knowledge of Moorish customs, etc.

might refer, in proof of this, to the old northern sagas in general; but to give a particular instance, it will be sufficient to produce the History of King Regner Lodbrog, a celebrated warrior and pirate, who reigned in Denmark about the year 800. This hero signalized his youth by an exploit of gallantry. A Swedish prince had a beautiful daughter, whom he intrusted (probably during some expedition) to the care of one of his officers, assigning a strong castle for their defence. The officer fell in love with his ward, and detained her in his castle, spite of all the efforts of her father. Upon this he published a proclamation through all the neighbouring countries, that whoever would conquer the ravisher and rescue the lady should have her in marriage. Of all that undertook the adventure, Regner alone was so happy as to achieve it: he delivered the fair captive, and obtained her for his prize. It happened that the name of this discourteous officer was Orme, which in the Icelandic language means serpent: wherefore the scalds, to give the more poetical turn to the adventure, represent the lady as detained from her father by a dreadful dragon, and that Regner slew the monster to set her at liberty. This fabulous account of the exploit is given in a poem still extant, which is even ascribed to Regner himself, who was a celebrated poet, and which records all the valiant achievements of his life.

With marvellous embellishments of this kind the scalds early began to decorate their narratives; and they were the more lavish of these in proportion as they departed from their original institution; but it was a long time before they thought of delivering a set of personages and adventures wholly feigned. Of the great multitude of romantic tales still preserved in the libraries of the north, most of them are supposed to have had some foundation in truth; and the more ancient they are, the more they are believed to be connected with true history.

It was not, probably, till after the historian and the bard had been long disunited, that the latter ventured at pure fiction. At length, when their business was no longer to instruct or inform, but merely to amuse, it was no longer needful for them to adhere to truth. Then succeeded fabulous songs and romances in verse, which for a long time prevailed in France and England, before they had books of chivalry in prose. Yet in both these countries the minstrels still retained so much of their original institution as frequently to make true events the subject of their songs; and indeed, as during the barbarous ages the regular histories were almost all written in Latin by the monks, the memory of events was preserved and propagated among the ignorant laity by scarce any other means than the popular songs of the minstrels.

II. The inhabitants of Sweden, Denmark, and Norway, being the latest converts to Christianity, retained their original manners and opinions longer than the other nations of Gothic race; and therefore they have preserved more of the genuine compositions of their ancient poets than their southern neighbours. Hence the progress, among them, from poetical history to poetical fiction is very discernible; they have some old pieces, that are in effect complete romances of chivalry. They have also (as hath been observed) a multitude of sagas or histories on romantic subjects, containing a mixture of prose and verse, of various dates, some of them written since the times of the Crusades, others long before; but their narratives in verse only are esteemed the more ancient.

Now, as the irruption of the Normans or Northmen into France under Rollo did not take place till towards the beginning of the tenth century. at which time the