But before we enter upon the consideration of the existing literature of romance, we must say a few words in regard to some other elements which were mingled in its original formation with the general form (however improved and refined) and with not a little also of the spirit of the genuine old European romance. All down through the ages in which those old romances were composed and admired, there was another and a totally distinct species of fictitious nar rative in which our ancestors found sources of amuse ment and delight, generally speaking, of a lighter and more comic character, It is not easy to say what were originally the precise limits of the proper Ro man, the fabliau, and the lai. By many critics of great name it is supposed that Mi was originally the name given to compositions in verse borrowed by the Romans from the people of Bretagne—in other words, of Celtic origin; and they go on to state their opinion that the proper Roman differed from the Fabliau only in being of greater length, and turning on incidents of a more serious cast. We have no room for dis cussing these controversies here, but it is certain that the Norman Trouveurs had a body of light ludicrous poetry from a very early period, and that, whatever hands the fictions of this class may have passed through, they may in far the greatest proportion be traced to an oriental original. The collection of tales by Petrus Alphonsus, the collection entitled Gesta Romanorum, the famous legend of the Seven Wise Masters, were obviously among the readiest and most used sources whence the trouveurs took their materials, and a very great part of these materials has been already traced to the ancient literature of Persia, and the yet more ancient literature of India.
The corresponding class of men in southern France, the troubadours, produced but few fabliaux ; they be took themselves almost exclusively to the poetry of sentimental and metaphysical love. Each of these classes of poets have produced a powerful influence on European literature, but their influence has not been equally acknowledged by those indebted to them. Petrarch and Dante gloried in confessing their obliga tions to the troubadour poets of Languedoc and Pro vence; but Boccaccio and his followers, the classical novelists of Italy, have preserved silence as to their not inferior obligations to the fictions of the trouveurs. The apologues, merry tales, satirical anecdotes, witty turns, comic satires, and ludicrous love-stories of the Fabliaux, were transformed into the elegant novelli of the old Florentines. From them they passed into Eu ropean literature at large, under a shape of refinement which secured them lasting popularity; and, in a word, it is not quite easy to say whether the drama and romance of Spain and of England be more in debted to the Italian novelists for humorous incidents, or to the old romance of the middle ages for elements of a higher description.
Cervantes was the great genius for whom it was re served" to mould out of the admixture of these various elements of fiction, that species of composition, the possession of which may be said to form one of the chief distinctions of modern literature in general as compared with the literature of classical antiquity. He tried them separately erc he hit upon the happy idea which has immortalized him. He imitated the tales of Boccaccio and the Diana of Montemayor, and he at one time certainly had entertained thoughts of writing a serious imitation of Amadis.* But Don
Quixote was the felicitous conception destined to form a new era in European letters.
The Spaniards had, before this work appeared, di vided their favour between the brood of Amadis on the one hand, and on the other comic satirical tales, formed no doubt from the Italian novels, hut composed at greater length, turning almost exclusively on the tricks of cheats, sharpers, and vagrants—the talcs of what they called the gusto piscaresco—of which Laza rillo de Tormes, and Guzman D'Alfarache are the best, and the best known. In these works the base side of nature was caricatured as exclusively as the lbfty one was exaggerated in the proper romances. Cervantes conceived a plan by which he was enabled to unite all the best elements of both, and to give both the benefit of being illustrated by the power of con trast. How far he was himself aware of the extent to which he was about to change the whole face of ro mantic literature, it is hard to say, for no great man was more modest than he, not even his contemporary Shakspeare. The result, however, is, that we have a species of literature which the world had never had before, and which appears to have a fair chance of ultimately holding a rank not inferior to that of the drama itself—the prose epic of actual life—a form of composition which opens the widest field imaginative genius has ever been engaged upon; which admits the use of materials of at least as diverse character, and is capable of rewarding the exertions of talents at least as various as the stage; and which permits man ners, feelings, characters, incidents,—above all, the development of individual natures, and the picturesque of manners,—to be represented in a style infinitely more full, satisfactory, and complete, than any other mode of composition with which the world has ever been acquainted.
It would be ridiculous to enter into a particular de scription of a work so perfectly known to all who read any thing, as this; we shall only observe, first, that it is a total mistake to suppose that Cervantes intended to attack the spirit of heroism; on the contrary, in Don Quixote himself, he is careful to make us revere the high feelings of the Castilian gentleman, even while we are smiling at the extravagances of the madman. It is equally wrong to suppose that he at tacked the real old stately romance of the middle ages: on the contrary, he had at one time an intention to write a solemn romance of that sort himself; and throughout all his books we have distinct laudations of Amadis and Pahnerin, and the truly excellent ro mances. He caricatured indeed some of the incidents of the original Amadis, because they were universally familiar to his readers, but his true object (and he himself says so in his preface) was to put down the taste for the bad imitations of Amadis with which Spain was at that time actually deluged. His happy genius rendered him incapable of executing this with out doing things infinitely better. lie could not ridi cule those trashy romances, without producing a true romance himself—a romance in which the ludicrous and the pathetic, the satirical and the poetical, the fulness of narrative, and the clearness and terseness of dramatic composition, were all for the first time blended together,—each element gaining life and beauty from the contrasts under which it is surveyed.