The last of our divisions, however, exhibits the whole body of romantic elements as nothing else does. It is not our business in this place to deal with the Arthurian legend generally as regards origin, contents, etc., nor, in the present division of this actual article, to look at it except for a special purpose and in connec tion with and contradistinctive to the other groups just surveyed. Here, however, we at last find all the elements of romance, thor oughly mixed and thoroughly at home, with the result not merely that the actual story becomes immensely popular and widely spread ; not only that it receives the greatest actual development of any romantic theme; but that, in a curious fashion, it attracts to itself great numbers of practically independent stories—in not a few cases probably quite independent at first—which seem afraid to present themselves without some tacking on (it may be of the loosest and most accidental description) to the great poly centric cycle, the stages of which gather round Merlin, the Round Table, the Grail and the Guinevere-Lancelot-Mordred catastro phe. All the elements, let it be repeated, are here present : war, love and religion; the characteristic extension of subject in des ultory adventure-chronicles; the typical rather than individual character (though the strong individuality of some of the un known or half-known contributors sometimes surmounts this) ; the admixture of the marvellous, not merely though mainly as part of the religious element ; the presence of the chivalrous ideal.
'Italian romance seems to have modelled itself early on French, and it is doubtful, rich as is the late crop of Spanish romances, whether we have any that deserve the name strictly and are really early.
The strong dramatic interest of the central story is rather super added to than definitely evolved from these elements ; but they are still present, just as, though more powerfully than, in the weakest of miscellaneous romans d'aventures.
A further step in the logical and historical exploration of ro mance may be taken by regarding the character-and-story classes round which it groups itself, and which from the intense com munity of mediaeval literature—the habit of mediaeval writers not so much to plagiarize from one another as to take up each after each the materials and the instruments which were not the prop erty of any—is here especially observable. Prominent above everything is the world-old motive of the quest; which, world old as it is, here acquires a predominance that it has never held before or since. The object takes pretty various, though not quite infinitely various, forms, from the rights of the disinherited heir and the hand or the favour of the heroine, to individual things which may themselves vary from the Holy Grail to so many hairs of a sultan's beard. 4 may be a friendly knight who is lost in adventure, or a felon knight who has to be punished for his tres passes; a spell of some kind to be laid ; a monster to be extermi nated; an injured virgin or lady, or an infirm potentate, to be suc coured or avenged; an evil custom to be put an end to; or simply some definite adventure or exploit to be achieved. But quest of some sort there must certainly be if (as in Sir Launfal, for in stance) it is but the recovery of a love forfeited by misbehaviour or mishap. It is almost a sine qua non—the present writer, think ing over scores, nay hundreds, of romances, cannot at the moment remember one where it is wanting in some form or another.
It will be observed that this at once provides the amplest oppor tunity for the desultory concatenation or congregation of incident and episode which is of the very essence of romance. Often, nay
generally, the conditions, localities and other circumstances of the quest are half known, or all but unknown, to the knight, and he is sometimes intentionally led astray, always liable to be inciden tally called off by interim adventures. In many (perhaps most) cases the love interest is directly connected with the quest, though it may be in the way of hindrance as well as of furtherance or reward The war interest always is so connected ; and the religious interest commonly—almost universally in fact—is an insepa rable accident. But everything leads up to, involves, eventuates in the fighting. The quest, if not always a directly warlike one, always involves war; and the endless battles have at all times, since they ceased to be the great attraction, continued to be the great obloquy of romance. It is possible no doubt that reports of tournaments and single combats with lance and sword, mace and battle-axe, may be as tedious to some people as reports of football matches certainly are to others. It is certain that the former were as satisfactory in former times to their own admirers as the latter are now. In fact the variety of incident is almost as remarkable as the sameness. And the same may be said, with even greater confidence, of the adventures between the fights in castle and church and monastery, in homestead or hermitage. The actual stories are not much more alike than those who have read large numbers of modern novels critically know to be the case with them. But the absence, save in rare cases, of the ele ment of character, and the very small presence of that of con versation, show up the sameness that exists in the earlier case.
The same deficiency in individual character-drawing, and in the conversation which is one of its principal instruments, brings out in somewhat unfair relief some other cases of apparent sameness —the "common forms" of story and of character itself. The disinherited heir, the unfaithful or wronged wife, the wicked step mother, the jealous or wrongly suspected lover, are just as uni versal in modern fiction as they are in mediaeval—for the simple reason that they are common if not universal in nature. But the skeleton is more obvious because it is less clothed with flesh and garments over the flesh ; the texture of the canvas shows more because it is less worked upon. Some of these common forms, however, are more peculiar to mediaeval times ; and some, though not many, allow excursions into abnormalities which, until recently, were tabooed to the modern novelist. Among the former the wickedness of the steward is remarkable, and of course not difficult to account for. The steward or seneschal of romance, with some honourable exceptions, is as wicked as the baronet of a novel, but here the explanation is not metaphysical. He was constantly left in charge in the absence of his lord and so was exposed to temptation. The extreme and almost Ephesian con solableness of the romance widow can be equally rationalized— and in fact is so in the stories themselves—by the danger of the fief being resumed or usurped in the absence of a male tenant who can maintain authority and discharge duties. While such themes as the usually ignorant incest of son with mother or the more deliberate passion of father for daughter come mostly from very popular early examples—the legend of St. Gregory of the Rock or the story of Apollonius of Tyre.