We may now proceed to notice briefly the different classes offictitious narrative which have successively found favour in modern Europe ;—those various classes of com position which are in common parlance considered as in cluded within the application of the term ROMANCE. But before entering on this, it is necessary to observe a general fact—at first glance strange and even inexplica ble—viz. that unquestionable though it be, that among each of the Gothic tribes the first exertions of imagina tion were bestowed on the adorning of the legends, pro per and peculiar to the tribe itself, it is still certain that no one nation or tribe of them all can at this hour point to its oldest existing Romantic Literature, and say, Be hold the genuine unadulterated tribute paid by our an cestors to the greatness of the founders and original he roes of our own race. The Germans must produce the Nibelungenlied and Heldenbuch—but some of the no blest heroes of these are not Germans but Huns—the very chieftains who conquered many of the faire'st pro vinces of their country under the guidance of Attila. The men of Normandy must produce the romances in which Charlemagne and Roland and the rest of that cycle flour ish—but these heroes were not Norman heroes, but the heroic ancestors of the very people whose territory the Normans ravaged and in part seized. The third great division of historical romance, is that in which Arthur and the knights of his round table are celebrated ; but the first compositions of this class were to all appearance framed for the amusement of the Norman Court of En gland—or, if the Tristram of Thomas the Rhymer he the earliest of them all, that was still the work of a poet who neither wrote in the language, nor to flatter the taste of the British or Armorican descendants of the race among which the historical Arthur flourished.
The facility with which one nation borrows and adopts the heroic legends of another, is illustrated in every liter ature, or very nearly so, that we know of By such adop tion those whose business it is to minister to the delight of others by the composition of romantic narratives, find of course their own labour much lightened : nay even those whose genius sets them above this consideration, are tempted to the same practice by the superior field which it obviously opens for the introduction of that marvellous, which in early and rude times must always form the most engaging condiment in such manufacture. Be this as it may, however, the facts we have above sta ted are undeniable—and equally so is the still stronger one, that from the remotest times until this very day, the favourite and flower of Persian romance is, under the name of Iskendar, that very Alexander who overthrew the empire of old Persia. So catching indeed has this contagion been always felt to be, that we know Mahomet himself was at considerable pains to prevent the same " Macedonian madman" from being adopted in a similar way by the minstrels of his own Arabia.
It would appear, however, that at least two causes of a more particular nature must have operated to a great extent in the adoption of these foreign legends by the different romances of modern Europe. The first of these we take to be this : that in the original imaginative or ro mantic compositions of all these nations, the mythologi cal apparatus employed must, of course, have been hea then, and that when Christianity had been introduced among them, there was more to disgust than to attract in the rude and bloody character of that apparatus. The heroes themselves, moreover, must have been represen ted as stained with traits of character extremely offensive to the Christian priests, who, being in possession of al most all the knowledge of the times, must soon have exer ted directly or indirectly, a commanding and controlling influence over its literature. It is only in considerations of this sort that we can find a satisfactory explanation of the substitution of,Charlemagne and his captains, for the northern ancestors of those who took possession of the fine province of Neustria, and thence extended their arms, and, with their arms, these their newly adopted legends to England and to Sicily. The same thing may be said
of the banishment of the old Saxon legends, and the as sumption of those of the Christian Arthur in England; and precisely the same thing may be said of the adoption of the heroes of the Nibelungenlied, in place of the ori ginal heathen Hermanns, &c. among the Germans.
Another, and scarcely perhaps a less powerful cause, must have operated in two at least of the cases we have referred to. The tribes who made conquests in those days were always far ruder in manners, and of course in language, than those who were obliged to submit to their arms. Such conquerors in all cases soon borrow from the civilization of those whom they have subdued. The Saxon pirates, and subsequently the old Norman sea kings, must have felt themselves to be savages in com parison with those whom they deprived of the soil of England,—a country which had for centuries partaken in the light of Roman cultivation. The Normans when they invaded Neustria, to which they afterwards gave their name, must have felt the same thing in a still more serious degree ; or, at all events, the feeling must have operated still more strongly with them, since they were led to adopt so much more of the language of their new vassals. This must have facilitated to a great extent the adoption of the more polished and adorned legends which these rude warriors found in possession of the conquered soil.
There is indeed one exception, which we ought per haps to have mentioned ere now ; we mean that which is to be found in the existence of certain real old heathen legends in the literature of Scandinavia. The remains of these, preserved in some of the Eddas, are no doubt extremely valuable, not only on account of the high po etical merit which they exhibit, but still more of the light they throw on the ancient life of kindred nations, the his tory of whose manners we can scarcely trace to any ex tent worth mentioning beyond the period of their Chris tianization. The existence of these relics now, is however to be accounted for, only by remembering that Scandina via was not Christianized until at a comparatively recent period, and through the agency of missionaries refined enough to take some interest in the preservation of the original traditions of the soil, merely as matters of curios ity. Even in those regions, it may be added, the legends of Arthur and Charlemagne soon supplanted, generally speaking, the old heathen legends ; and as, at all events, these have not exerted any discernible direct influence over the literature of modern Europe, however different may have been the case in regard to the kindred produc tions imported from the north at an earlier period, it may perhaps be considered as sufficient, that we have chosen to consider them as, after all, forming only an ex ception to a rule. The use which has recently been made of these materials by some ingenious persons in Germa ny, cannot deserve to be particularly commented on.— That is the work of an age, in which literature is nothing but an exquisite art, in which the fancy is satiated with im itations of all sorts of legends, without the popular feeling being deeply worked upon by any of them. La Motte Fouque and his brethren treat Scandinavia exactly asthe authors of our own Thalabas and Kehamas do Arabia and India. Indeed in spite of all their pretences, the Scandi navian inspiration of the modern Danish and Swedish tragedians and romancers, such as Ingehnann and Oehlen schlxger, is universally felt to be entirely of the same artificial and ineffectual character.