propriety attempt to trace to the forests of Germany all the subtleties of the scholastic philosophy (and which arose in the same age as the courts of Love), as to claim for their inhabitants that reverence and adoration of the female sex which has descended to our own times. This deference to female rights and the establishment of an equality between the sexes have in their origin been wholly independent of love as a passion, (whose language in all ages and among all nations has been the same,) and are manifestly the offspring of that dispensation, which has purified religion of every sensual rite, and which, by spiritualizing all our hopes and wishes of a future existence, has shed the same refining influence on our present institutions: “ L'amour de Dieu et des dames" was not a mere form. CONTENT S. VOL. I. Author's Preface Page. (3) (11) DISSERTATION I. Of the Origin of Romantic Fiction in Europe i Note by the Editor on the Lais of Marie de France Ixxiv Note by the Editor on the Saxon Ode on the Victory of Athelstan.... lxxxvii DISSERTATION II. ciii DISSERTATION III. On the Gesta Romanorum . clxxvii THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY. Section I. and after the Norman conquest. Specimens of Norman-Saxon 1 Section II. Page. and jestours. Erceldoune and Kendale. Bishop Grosthead. Monks write for the Minstrels. Monastic libraries full of ro- mances. Minstrels admitted into the monasteries. Regnorum Chronica and Mirabilia Mundi. Early European travellers Effects of the increase of tales of chivalry. Rise of chivalry. Crusades. Rise and improvements of Romance. View of the rise of metrical romances. Their the thirteenth century. French minstrels in England. Pro- vencial poets. Popular romances. Dares Phrygius. Guido de Colonna. Fabulous histories of Alexander. Pilpay's Fables. Roman d'Alexandre, Alexandrines. Communications between |