their early preference for telling their traditional stories. in prose. The Normans, like the Teutonic races, narrated in verse, and their stories reappeared in English verse, alliterative or rhymed, long before they were redacted, in the fifteenth century, into English prose. From the time of Layamon onwards, throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the work of translation and adaptation went on, and the establishment of the English language in its own country, about the middle of the fourteenth century, gave a fresh impetus to the process. In this way the four principal mediæval cycles of romance, dealing severally with the legends of Charlemagne, Arthur, Alexander, and Troy, had been made familiar to the English people in their own tongue by the close of the fourteenth century. Fashioned by French and Anglo-Norman poets and reciters from material supplied by popular or literary tradition, modified by each successive generation to suit prevailing tastes, these legends reached the English-speaking people of England for the most part in late and elaborately wrought forms. There is no English version of any of the Charlemagne legends that reproduces the grave and unadorned simplicity of the French chansons de geste of the eleventh century. Religious and severe in spirit, as monotonous in theme and phrase as in metre, the Chanson de Roland has nothing in it of the marvellous adventures or of the love-interest that came to be regarded later as constituting the essence of romance. The fair Aude, the sister of Oliver, betrothed to Roland, is the only woman who figures in this poem, and her name is never mentioned by Roland. Only when he is

dead, she comes to Charlemagne. "Where is the Lord Roland who swore that I should be his bride?' she asked the king. Full of grief and pain, weeping and tearing his white beard, Charles replied, 'My sister, my dear friend, you ask for one who is dead; but in his place I will give you one who is more mighty, Louis, my son, who rules my marches, better man I know not.'

"Then answered Aude, 'Strange to me seems your speech. God and his angels and saints forbid that I should live now when Roland is dead.' Her colour fled, she fell forthwith dead at the feet of Charles. May God have mercy on her soul. The French barons wept and lamented her." *

The severity and restraint of this may be taken as typical of the earliest monuments of medieval romantic literature. But the influence of the Crusades, and the development of early feudal manners into the richly decorative chivalry of the later Middle Ages, transformed and elaborated the romances before they became English. When Sir Thomas Malory, Caxton, and Lord Berners gave to the Arthur and Charlemagne romancės their first English prose dress, it was from late French versions that they worked. The history of English prose fiction begins with those three names, at precisely the point where the researches of folk-lore reach their conclusion. The age of the nameless minstrel is over, that of the responsible prose author has begun.

The greater part of the story-telling of Chaucer's time was done by the minstrel, the descendant of the early * Translated in the Dublin Review, July, 1890.

jongleur. But not only was the minstrel degenerate since the days of Taillefer, when he shared in heroic exploits; he was also in danger of eclipse from purely literary rivals. In the towns, growing wonderfully in number and importance, the annual performance of the dramatic cycles of "Mysteries" by the trade gilds formed the principal literary diversion of the people. At the court, the new poetry of Geoffrey Chaucer was putting to shame, by its high artistic finish, the ambling monotony of the chanted recitations concerning Sir Eglamour, Sir Perceval, and Sir Isembras. But in the baronial hall in the country, especially "when folk were feasted and fed," and willing to stifle conversation for a little, the minstrel was sure of a welcome and gifts. His usual method of performance, still common in Eastern countries, was to chant the stanzas of his long narrative poem to the droning accompaniment of the vielle, played with a short bow. In this way gentle and simple were made familiar with

"What resounds

In fable or romance of Uther's son,

Begirt with British and Armoric knights,"

with the exploits of Roland and Oliver, or the adventures of those unattached knights whose names were, for the most part, ultimately connected with one or other of the great cycles.

The examples that have been preserved of this immense body of metrical literature are not without their characteristic merits. They are epical in spirit, although not in form; they frequently begin with the genealogy

of their hero, and carry him through the actions and adventures of his life, concluding with his epitaph and a general doxology. They display a marked preference for deeds done, and attempt no character-drawing. Knights are brave and ladies are fair, and the actions of both are directed by honour and love, in the highly conventional sense put upon these motives in the later days of chivalry. If a medieval minstrel had been requested to embody all the novels of Mr. Henry James in his narrative, he would have put them into a single line,

"When twenty years were come and gone,"

and hurried on to the next giant. The broad outlines of such a scheme work their own effect, and the deeds of the doughtiest of heroes are often saved from exaggeration by the largeness of the background behind. A sense of the instability of human life, very present to the minds of men familiar with battle and plague, is everywhere mirrored in these romances; some of them end, like a modern novel, with a marriage, but the chronicler rarely forgets to add the few additional lines of doggerel to the effect that

When the great story-teller of his age came, in the maturity of his powers, to build up the fabric of the

Canterbury Tales, he put into his own mouth a parody of the current metrical romances :

"Al of a knight was fair and gent

In batail and in tornament,

His name was Sir Thopas."

Chaucer the artist-perhaps the purest artist of all great names in English poetry-despised the otiose epithets, and the metre, so lacking in emphasis and distinction, of the verse romances; Chaucer the humourist, familiar with the witty and spirited tales of the South, found the languors of the ministrels' chronology intolerable. He commits the task of criticism to the host, who interrupts the tale with curses on its dulness, and orders its narrator to tell something in prose, containing matter either of mirth or doctrine. The host, that is to say, positively invites Chaucer to produce the first English novel. Here was the opportunity to naturalize in English prose the brief jocular fabliau of France, already perfected by Boccaccio in Italian prose under the name of the novella. For reasons best known to himself Chaucer lets slip this opportunity, and elects to narrate unto edification. In the Tale of Melibeus, with which he responds to the host's invitation, he chooses to treat of doctrine, and of doctrine in the dreariest mediæval manner of allegory. The stories in the Latin Gesta Romanorum, well known to Chaucer, can be stripped of their allegorical and moral tags, and thoroughly enjoyed by the profane reader; in the Tale of Melibeus the allegory permeates and curdles the story. It would seem as if Chaucer, who had emancipated his verse so completely from medieval allegory and abstraction,