ding host, and gave the signal for onset, by singing the Song of Roland, that renowned nephew of Charlemagne, of whom Romance speaks so much, and history so little; and whose fall, with the chivalry of Charles the Great in the pass of Roncesvalles, has given rise to such clouds of romantic fiction, that its very name has been for ever associated with it. The remarkable passage has been often quoted from the Brut of Wace, an Anglo-Norman metrical chronicle.

Which

"Taillefer, qui moult bien chantont
Sur un cheval gi tost alont,
Devant le Duc alont chantant
De Karlemaigne et de Rollant,
Et d'Oliver et des vassals,
Qui morurent en Rencevals."

may be thus rendered:

"Taillefer, who sung both well and loud,
Came mounted on a courser proud;
Before the Duke the minstrel sprung,
And loud of Charles and Roland sung,
Of Oliver and champions mo,
Who died at fatal Roncevaux."

This champion possessed the sleight-of-hand of the juggler, as well as the art of the minstrel. He tossed up his sword in the air, and caught it again as he galloped to the charge, and showed other feats of dexterity. Taillefer slew two Saxon warriors of distinction, and was himself killed by a third. Ritson, with less than his usual severe accuracy, supposed that Taillefer sung some part of a long metrical Romance upon Roland and his history; but the words chanson, cantilena, and song,

by which the composition is usually described, seems rather to apply to a brief ballad or national song; which is also more consonant with our ideas of the time and place where it was chanted.

But neither with these romantic and metrical chronicles did the mind long remain satisfied. More details were demanded, and were liberally added by the invention of those who undertook to cater for the public taste in such matters. The same names of kings and champions, which had first caught the national ear, were still retained, in order to secure attention; and the same assertions of authenticity, and affected references to real history, were stoutly made, both in the commencement and in the course of the narrative. Each nation, as will presently be seen, came at length to adopt to itself a cycle of heroes like those of the Iliad; a sort of common property to all minstrels who chose to make use of them, under the condition always that the general character ascribed to each individual hero was preserved with some degree of consistency. Thus, in the Romances of The Round Table, Gawain is usually represented as courteous; Kay as rude and boastful; Mordred as treacherous; and Sir Launcelot as a true though a sinful lover, and in all other respects a model of chivalry. Amid the Paladins of Charlemagne, whose cycle may be considered as peculiarly the property of French in opposition to Norman-Anglo Romance, Gan, or Ganelon of Mayence, is always represented as a faithless traitor, engaged in intrigues for the destruction of Christianity; Roland as brave, unsuspicious, devotedly loyal, and somewhat simple in his disposition;

Renaud, or Rinaldo, who possessed the frontier fortress, is painted with all the properties of a borderer, valiant, alert, ingenious, rapacious, and unscrupulous. The same conventional distinctions

1 [With regard to historical traditions, Charlemagne was considered principally, nay, almost solely, as a religious conqueror; and the fame of all his other exploits merged in the warlike missions which he undertook for the purpose of converting the heathen to the Christian faith. In those days the defeat of his army at Roncesvalles created a greater sensation in the world than the destruction of the French army in Russia, did in ours; because Charlemagne and his heroes were deemed invincible, and it was thought that angels led them on; the uninformed and illiterate nations of Europe could neither separate truth from falsehood, nor rouse themselves from their state of stupid wonder by learning to attribute human events to natural causes. A few judicious writers endeavoured yet in vain to dispel this mental darkness. They had not the power of dispersing their works amongst the multitude; even sovereigns could not read; and it is said that even Charlemagne himself was unable to write his name. Great events became known to the public chiefly by oral communication; whilst the task of committing them to writing devolved wholly upon the clergy, and it was their interest to bring religion into action on every occasion. When Charlemagne fought for the propagation of the faith, his victories were attributed to the co-operation of the celestial hierarchy; and when he was defeated in the Spanish passes, the credit of his defeat was given to Belzebub and Satan. The preachers acted exactly the part of story-tellers, as it is now sustained by the Turkish dervises; and whenever they wrote on the subject, they converted the life of Charlemagne into a tissue of legends and miracles. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the church began to recover its learning and dignity; at that period legendary lore became the property of the storytellers by profession. The marvellous tales which had once been repeated in the temples were retailed by the roadside. They quoted as their authority, a chronicle ascribed to Archbishop Turpin, but which he certainly never wrote. Pope Calixtus the Second, declared this chronicle to be authentic.

may be traced in the history of the Nibelung, a composition of Scandinavian origin, which has supplied matter for so many Teutonic Romances. Meisteir Hildebrand, Etzel, Theodorick, and the champion Hogan, as well as Crimhilda and the females introduced, have the same individuality of character, which is ascribed, in Homer's immortal writings, to the wise Ulysses, the brave but relentless Achilles, his more gentle friend Patroclus, Sarpedon the favourite of the gods, and Hector the protector of mankind. It was not permitted to the invention of a Greek poet to make Ajax a dwarf, or Teucer a giant, Thersites a hero, or Diomedes a coward; and it seems to have been under similar restrictions respecting consistency, that the ancient romancers exercised their ingenuity upon the mate

Perhaps he was influenced by the advantages which resulted to the Papal See, by encouraging the growth of every species of credulity. The highest sanction was thus given to a collection of all the lies and absurdities concerning the court of Charlemagne and his exploits, which had ever been sung, or preached, or written. It may be easily conceived that these tales bear no resemblance to the truth, except that here and there an historical name may be discovered amongst the heroes. It has been justly observed by M. Merivale, that there is only one authentic document of the middle ages in which we find any mention of Orlando, the Roland of the French, and in this he appears as Ruitlandus, Governor of the Marches of Brittany; yet this obscure chieftain is the Achilles of romantic poetry. Dante himself, in spite of his historical accuracy, has adopted some fabulous traditions relating to this hero, and to the battle of Roncesvalles.

"Dapo la dolorosa rotta, quando
Carlomagno perdè la santa gesta,
Non sonò si terribilmente Orlando!"

Quarterly Review, vol. xxi., (1819).]

rials supplied them by their predecessors. But, in other respects, the whole store of romantic history and tradition was free to all as a joint stock in trade, on which each had a right to draw as suited his particular purposes. He was at liberty not only to select a hero out of known and established names which had been the theme of others, but to imagine a new personage of his own pure fancy, and combine him with the heroes of Arthur's Table or Charlemagne's Court, in the way which best suited his fancy. He was permitted to excite new wars against those bulwarks of Christendom, invade them with fresh and innumerable hosts of Saracens, reduce them to the last extremity, drive them from their thrones, and lead them into captivity, and again to relieve their persons, and restore their sovereignty, by events and agents totally unknown in their former story.

In the characters thus assigned to the individual personages of romantic fiction, it is possible there might be some slight foundation in remote tradition, as there were also probably some real grounds for the existence of such persons, and perhaps for a very few of the leading circumstances attributed to them. But these realities only exist as the few grains of wheat in the bushel of chaff, incapable of being winnowed out, or cleared from the mass of fiction with which each new romancer had in his turn overwhelmed them. So that Romance, though certainly deriving its first original from the pure font of History, is supplied, during the course of a very few generations, with so many tributes from