In ii. (the sagas), while a large part of their matter and even not a little of their form are strongly romantic, differences of handling and still more of temper have made some demur to their inclusion under romance, while their final ousting in their own literatures by versions of the all-conquering French romance itself is an argument on the same side. But the Volsung story, for instance, is full of what may be called "undistilled" romance —the wine is there, but it has to be passed through the still— and even in the most domestic sagas proper this characteristic is largely present.
The other four classes, the miscellaneous stories from classical, Eastern and European sources, having less corporate or national character, lend themselves with greater ease to the conditions of romantic development; but even so in different degrees. The classical stories have to drop most of their original character and allow something very different to be superinduced before they be come thoroughly romantic. The greatest success of all in this way is the story of Troilus and Cressida. For before its development through the successive hands of Benoit de Sainte-More, Boccaccio (for we may drop Guido of the Columns as a mere middleman between Benoit and Boccaccio) and Chaucer, it has next to no classical authority of any kind except the mere names. In the various Alexandreids the element of the marvellous—the Eastern element, that is to say—similarly overpowers the classical. As for the Eastern stories themselves, they are particularly difficult of certain unravelment. The large moral division—such as Bar laam and Josaphat, the Seven Wise Masters in its various forms, etc., comes short of the strictly romantic. We do not know how much of East and how much of West there is in such things as Flore et Blanchefleur or even in H liOn of Bordeaux itself. Con
trariwise we ought to know, more certainly than apparently is known yet, what is the date and history of such a thing as that story of Zumurrud and Ali Shahr, which may be found partly in Lane and fully in the complete translations of the Arabian Nights, though not in the commoner editions, and which is evidently either copied from, or capable of serving as model to, a Western roman d'aventures itself.
We come, however, much closer to the actual norm itself— closer, in fact, than in any other place save one—in the various stories, English, French, and to a less extent German,' which gradually received in a loose kind of way the technical French term just used, a term not to be translated without danger. Nearly all these stories were drawn, by the astonishing centri petal tendency which made France the home of all romance be tween the r i th and the 13th centuries, into French forms; and in most cases no older ones survive. But it is hardly possible to doubt that in such a case, for instance, as Havelok, an original story of English or Scandinavian origin got itself into existence before, and perhaps long before, the French version was retrans ferred to English, and so in other cases. If, once more, we take our existing English Havelok and its sister King Horn, we see that the latter is a more romanced form than the former. Havelok is more like a chanson de geste—the love interest in it is very slight ; while in King Horn it is much stronger, and the increased strength is shown by the heroine being in some forms promoted into the title. If these two be studied side by side the process of transforming the mere story into the full romance is to no small extent seen in actual operation. But neither exhibits in any con siderable degree the element of the marvellous, or the religious element, and the love interest itself is, even in Horn, simple and not very dramatically or passionately worked out. In the later roman d'aventures, of which the 13th century was so pro lific (such as, to give one example out of many, Amadas and Idoine), these elements appear fully, and so they do in the great Auchinleck collection in English, which, though dating well within the i4th century, evidently represents the meditation and adapta tion of French examples for many years earlier.