ROMANCE.

ON account of the supposed immoral tendency of Romances, a very severe censure has been passed upon them by the famous Roger Ascham. He says that "In our forefathers' time, when papistry, as a standing pool, covered and overflowed all England, few books were read in our tongue, saving certain books of chivalry, as they said, for pastime and pleasure; which, as some say, were made in monasteries, by idle monks, or wanton canons : for example, Morte Arthur, the whole pleasure of which book standeth in two special points-in open man-slaughter and bold bawdry. In which book, those be counted the noblest knights that kill most men without any quarrel, and commit foulest adulteries by subtlest shifts: as sir Lancelot, with the wife of king Arthur, his master; sir Tristram, with the wife of king Mack, his uncle; sir Lamerock, with the wife

of king Lote, that was his own aunt. This is good stuff for wise men to laugh at, or honest men to take pleasure in. Yet (says he) I know when God's Bible was banished the court, and Morte Arthur received into the prince's chamber."

Though we should refuse to subscribe to this illiberal and puritanical manner of viewing the productions of chivalry; yet the passage furnishes a proof of their prevalence, and of the predominant taste of the age, (at least among the higher ranks,) even in Ascham's time. After briefly noticing their origin, it may not be improper in this place, to state the effects which these compositions, in the opinions of men of a more enlightened and liberal cast of sentiment, have produced relatively to social improvement.

Romance was the offspring of chivalry; as chivalry again was the result of the feudal system. Agreeably to the institutions of that system, each landed proprietor was a soldier; and was obliged, by the conditions of his tenure, to follow his lord on horseback when he went to war. Hence a soldier was, in those times, a man of the first importance and consideration. The youth, from their earliest

childhood, were initiated in the use of arms; and were taught to look forward for their fame and consideration in society, and for the still more inspiring remuneration of the smiles of the fair, to military achievement and heroic adventure. War, therefore, became the object of their most eager and enthusiastic aspirations; and though they seldom wanted opportunities for the display of their courage, the occasional intervals of peace seem to have given birth to tilts and tournaments, justs and defiances, which furnished at once the schools of chivalry, and a vent for their ever-active heroism. All differences were decided by an appeal to the sword, whether it consisted of treason, or rape, or murder. The restless spirit of this system, too, stimulated its professors to go in quest of adventures for the mere pleasure of achieving them; and diligently to seek for acts of oppression and wrong, not so much in the first instance, that they may relieve the oppressed, and redress the wrong, as for the delight they felt in martial activity.

The first Romances were merely the record of the adventures and achievements of these military heros; and consisted simply of songs sung by the minstrels at festivals and convivial

meetings, accompanied by the music of the harp. The particular machinery of giants, fairies, dragons, and enchantments of all sorts, is supposed to have been furnished by the Scalds, or Scandinavian bards; to which were added the other wonderful materials invented in the 12th and 13th centuries.

The first symptom of the existence of Romantic stories, occurs at the battle of Hastings, A.D. 1066. Taillefer, a soldier in the army of William the Conqueror, and who first broke the ranks of the English, is recorded to have sung on that occasion the song of Roland, one of the heros of Charlemagne. From the circumstance of this song being sung with a view to awaken martial enthusiasm, it is natural to infer, that not only this, but others of a like description must have become popular in Normany for some time prior to the Norman invasion. From the various songs existing on the subject of Roland, Oliver, and the other heros of the imaginary war of Charlemagne, against the Saracens in Spain, was com piled, about the year 1100, a large prose narrative in Latin, and supposed to have been the production of Turpin, archbishop of Rheims, It was given to the world as a real history of

the exploits of that monarch, and of the twelve peers of France, his cotemporaries. This work, together with that of Geoffrey of Monmouth, before mentioned, are considered as the main sources of Romantic fiction.

Chivalry originated in the eleventh century. The first regular Romance of which we have any account, appeared in the succeeding one. It was entitled Le Brut d'Angleterre, and was written by Robert Wace, a native of Jersey, who was about thirty years younger than Geoffrey of Monmouth, from whose fabulous history he obviously derived his materials.

But Arthur and Charlemagne are not the only themes of these fictious narratives. The writers of Romance in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, had likewise recourse to the Trojan war; the history of Alexander the Great; and the Crusades; all of which subjects were treated in the vulgar, or Romance tongue. And it is a peculiar feature of these compositions, that whatsoever the subject, or the period whence the characters are drawn, they are uniformly invested with the costume of the age of chivalry.

The first Romances were all written in verse; and like the separate songs from which they were