We have both heathens and Christians in these legends; but the heathens are genuine worshippers of Odin, not of Mahomet, and the Christians are represented as living in peace with them, beneath the tolerating sway of Attila the Hun I A great deal of the pure old Scandinavian tone is preserved in the manners of the heroes, and in the tone of the narrative. A peculiarly dark and solemn character of melancholy pervades the whole spirit of the work. Devotion and daring are carried to their utmost height ; and a rude and imperfect idea of the Christian doctrines appears to struggle throughout with elements of a very different description, softening rather than ex pelling the stern and iron gloom of the black and bloody creed of Scandinavian mythology. It is impossible for us to bestow more time on this singular relic of antiqui ty here; but we regret this the less, as we see a transla tion of it into the English language announced as nearly ready for publication.
The Heldenbuch, or Book of Heroes, which is com monly esteemed as the second great storehouse of this old German romance, is a compilation of very incongru ous materials. Many of the pieces contained in it ap proach very closely the tone of the Nibelungenlied, but others are obviously the productions of a later period, as they abound in allusions to the very things, the absence of all mention of which in the older collection has been already commented on. We refer our readers to the edi tions of these works, published by Muller, Grimm, and Haagen, and to the comments on them scattered over the works of Herder and the Schlegels.
The other two great bodies, however, of romance— those which may be generally designated by the names of Arthur and Charlemagne—are the only ones which may be said to have possessed a really European charac ter and influence. It is by no means easy to decide which of these ought to be considered as the more ancient.— The historical Arthur belonged to an age far remoter than that of the son of Pepin ; and it can scarcely be doubted that the people of his own race had founded ro mantic narratives on his adventures almost in his own time. But the romances concerning him and his he roes which Nv e now possess, were all, it is obvious, the productions of a much more recent time. They are all, in a word, distinguished by the vividness with which the manners of the most perfect age of chivalry are repre sented in them. Nay, many critics have gone so far as to decide against them the question, as to their relative antiquity and that of the romances of the Charlemagne body, upon this ground only, that, as they allege, the spirit of chivalry appears in them under a purer and more ideal ized form than in the others. Such in particular is the opinion of the great German critic, Schlegel.
This controversy has not yet been terminated, nor do we consider it as one of any sort of impor`ance. 'We now know very well, that both of these bodies of ro mantic fiction were arrayed in the dress-which is to us their earliest, among the same nation, and in or about the same period. The sagacious guess of the
Count de Tressan has been converted into all but cer tainty by the accurate researches of the Abbe de la Rue; and we may state with as much confidence as is attainable in any matters of the kind, that the earliest metrical romances both of the Charlemagne class and of the other were composed in Norman French, for the amusement of the Anglo-Norman court of the early Plantagenets, and their powerful barons, who, in that age held estates for the most part both in Normandy and England, and among whom the lan guage of their old duchy was used almost exclusively for the better part of three centuries, subsequent to the invasion of William I. They are all composed in the Longue d'Oil.* The Abbe has traced in a vast number of instances the persons to whom they are dedicated and addressed; and, lastly, he has pointed out with such acuteness, and such convincing tact, the innumerable, the perpetual complimentary allu sions to the power and greatness of the Anglo-Nor mans, that altogether the mass of evidence is quite irresistible. We refer our readers to his interesting works for the details of his masterly exposition.
Another important particular, in which these two classes of romance coincide, is this,—(we have al ready alluded to it)—that the great and leading in spiration of both, seems to lie in the representation of Christian knighthood arrayed against the spirit of paganism. In both, we have a great monarch sur rounded by a cycle of knightly brothers, all living under the rules of an established brotherhood of chi valry. The great object of both cycles, is the asser tion of the cause of Christ against that of a warlike race of misbelievers. Arthur and his knights are opposed to the bloody heathenism of the Saxon hordes, who invaded the civilized, in so far at least, and christianized provinces of Britain. Charlemagne, and the peers of his cycle, are opposed in precisely the same manner to the Mahometans, who, in the days of the historical Charlemagne, certainly threaten ed to obliterate every trace of western civilization, and to eradicate the Christian faith from the soil of Europe. This is the great and presiding idea in these two kindred classes of romance; and the picture is filled up in them both with materials and colourings of a wonderfully similar nature. In each, the monarch knight forms the centre of a band of brothers, among whom the great and leading diversities of human cha racter and disposition are divided. In each, prophe cies, charms, enchantments, giants, dwarfs, witches, are called in to supply the marvellous; in each, amor ous and ludicrous adventures are employed to relieve the solemnity of the main body of the fiction; in each, we find a crowd of minor characters and incidents di verging in all directions from the great centre, yet all in some way or other attesting their connexion with it. What Charlemagne is to his peers, the romance of Charlemagne is to its age; and exactly so as to Ar thur, and the body of fictions of which his round table is the centre point.