viction. But in this, as in almost every thing else which was exposed to the reprobation of Mr. Ritson, there was a secondary design in the back-ground, of more importance than the original proposition; and an unqualified denial of Geoffrey's Armorican original was an indispensable step towards advancing a favourite theory of his own. The substance of this theory may be given in the language of its author: "That the English acquired the art of romance-writing from the French seems clear and certain, as most of the specimens of that art in the former language are palpable and manifest translations of those in the other: and this too may serve to account for the origin of romance in Italy, Spain, Germany and Scandinavia. But the French romances are too ancient to be indebted for their existence to more barbarous nations69 ❞ With the truth or fallacy of this hypothesis we are not at present concerned. But it will be obvious that its success must at any time have depended upon the degree of credit assigned to the repeated declarations of Geoffrey, and the claims possessed by Armorica to an original property in the British Chronicle 170. A sweeping contradiction therefore, without the 100 Metrical Romances, i. p. c. It may be as well to subjoin the succeeding paragraph in Mr. Ritson's dissertation, for the benefit of those who can reconcile the contradiction it contains, to the doctrine avowed in the passage cited above: "It is, therefor, a vain and futile endeavour to seek for the origin of romance in all agees and countrys, where literature has been cultivateed, and genius and taste have inspire'd, whether in India, Persia, Greece, Italy or France, the earlyest product of that cultivation, and that genius and taste, has been poetry and romance, with reciprocal obligations, perhaps, between one country and another. The Arabians, the Persians, the Turks, and, in short, almost every nation in the globe abound in romancees of their own invention." Ib. ci. 200 the Norman minstrels could thus de- 170 There are those who will say, If shadow of proof-as if proof in such a case would have been an insult to the reader's understanding-was to destroy every belief in the former; while a constant call for proof, a most vehement "iteration" for the original documents, and an unmeaning speculation upon the physical inabilities of the whole Armorican nation, from the ruggedness of their language, to cultivate poetry, was to silence every pretension of the latter. A more candid spirit of criticism has at length conceded, that a general charge of imposture unsupported by testimony, or even a showing of some adequate motive for the concealment of the truth, is not to overrule the repeated affirmations of a writer no ways interested in maintaining a false plea; and that, however much the tortuous propensities of one man's mind might incline him to prefer the crooked policy of fraud to the more simple path of plain-dealing, the contagion of such a disease was not likely to extend itself to a long list of authorities, all of whom must have been injured rather than benefited by the confession, who could have had no common motives with the first propounder of the deceit, and who were divided both by time and situation from any connexion with him, and generally speaking from any intercourse with each other. The concurrent testimony of the French romancers is now admitted to have proved the existence of a large body of fiction relative to Arthur in the province of Brittany: and while they confirm the assertions of Geoffrey in this single particular, it - is equally clear they have neither echoed his language, nor borrowed his materials. Every further investigation of the subject only tends to support the opinion pronounced by Mr. Douce; that "the tales of Arthur and his knights which have appeared in so many forms, and under the various titles of the St. Graal, Tristan de Leonnois, Lancelot du Lac, &c. were not immediately borrowed from the work of Geoffrey of Monmouth, but from his Armoric originals1." in See below, p. xvi. The great evil with which this long-contested question appears to be threatened at the present day, is an extreme equally dangerous with the incredulity of Mr. Ritson-a disposition to receive as authentic history, under a slightly fabulous colouring, every incident recorded in the British Chronicle. An allegorical interpretation is now inflicted upon all the marvellous circumstances; a forced construction imposed upon the less glaring deviations from probability; and the usual subterfuge of baffled research,―erroneous readings, and etymological sophistry, is made to reduce every stubborn and intractable text to something like the consistency required. It might have been expected that the notorious failures of Dionysius and Plutarch in Roman history would have prevented the repetition of an error, which neither learning nor ingenuity can render palatable; and that the havoc and deadly ruin effected by these ancient writers (in other respects so valuable) in one of the most beautiful and interesting monuments of traditional story, would have acted as a sufficient corrective on all future aspirants. The favourers of this system might at least have been instructed by the philosophic example of Livy,—if it be lawful to ascribe to philosophy a line of conduct which perhaps was prompted by a powerful sense of poetic beauty,—that traditional record can only gain in the hands of the future historian, by one attractive aid, the grandeur and lofty graces of that incomparable style in which the first Decade is written; and that the best duty towards antiquity, and the most agreeable one towards posterity, is to transmit the narrative received as an unsophisticated tradition, in all the plenitude of its marvels, and the awful dignity of its supernatural agency. For however largely we may concede that real events have sup- " plied the substance of any traditive story, yet the amount of absolute facts, and the manner of those facts, the period of their occurrence, the names of the agents, and the locality given to the scene-are all combined upon principles so wholly beyond our knowledge, that it becomes impossible to fix with certainty upon any single point better authenticated than its fellow. Probability in such decisions will often prove the most fallacious guide we can follow; for, independently of the acknowledged historical axiom, that "le vrai n'est pas toujours le vraisemblable," innumerable instances might be adduced, where tradition has had recourse to this very probability, to confer a plausible sanction upon her most fictitious and romantic incidents 172. It will be a much more useful labour, wherever it can be effected, to trace the progress of this traditional story in the country where it has become located, by a reference to those natural or artificial monuments which are the unvarying sources of fictitious events; and, by a strict The story of the doves at Dodona and the origin of the oracle there, is too well known to require a repetition. There is a connexion and propriety in the solution given by Herodotus, which on a first perusal carries conviction to the reader's mind. Yet nothing can be more questionable than the whole recital. The honours of the sacred oak were shared in common with Jupiter, by Dione, whose symbol, a golden dove, like the golden swallows on the brazen roof of Apollo at Delphi, (Pind. Frag. vol. iii, p. 54.) was seen suspended from the branches of the venerable tree. (Philostrat. Icon. ii. 34. p. 858-9.) Hence the tradition. The explanation of the Egyptian priesthood is rendered intelligible by a passage in the Horapollo (ii. 22.), where it is stated that a black dove was the sacred symbol, under which these people expressed a woman maintaining her widowhood till death. That this obvious source of the Dodonæan fable should have yielded to the improbable dictum of the Theban priesthood, will not appear remarkable, when we remember that the same class of men had told Solon, "You Greeks are always children" (Plato Tim. p. 22.): and that the Greeks, who believed every tale these artful foreigners chose to impose upon them, were proverbial for their admiration of the wondrous out of their own country. (Vid. Paus. ix. c. 36.) This 178 Higden will inform us how busily tradition works in this way: "There is a nother sygne and token before yo Popes palays, an horse of bras, and a man syttyng theron, and holdeth his right honde as though he spake to the peple, and holdeth his brydell in his lyfte honde, and hath a cucko bytwen his hors heres. And a seke dwerf under his feet. Pylgryms callen that man Theodericus. And the comyns call him Constantinus; but clerkes of the courte calle hym Marcus and Quintus Curtius..... They that calle hym Marcus, telle this reson and skyll. There was a dwerf of the kynred of Messenis, his craft was Nygromancye. Whan he had subdewed kynges that dwelled nyghe hym, and made hem subgette to comparison of its details with the analogous memorials of other nations, to separate those elements which are obviously of native growth, from the occurrences bearing the impress of a foreign origin 14. We shall gain little perhaps by such a course for the history of human events; but it will be an important accession to our stock of knowledge on the history of the human mind. It will infallibly display, as in the analysis of every similar record, the operation of that refining principle which is ever obliterating the monotonous deeds of violence that fill the chronicle of a nation's early career; and exhibit the brightest attribute in the catalogue of man's intellectual endowments-a glowing and vigorous imagination, -bestowing upon all the impulses of the mind a splendour and virtuous dignity, which, however fallacious historically considered, are never without a powerfully redeeming good, the ethical tendency of all their lessons. The character of the specimens interspersed throughout hym, thenne he wente to Rome, to warre with the Romayns. And with his craft he benam the Romayns power and might for to smyte, and beseged hem longe tyme iclosed within the cyte. This dwerf went every day tofore the sonne rysyng in to the felde for to do his crafte. Whan the Romayns had espyed that maner doynge of the dwerf, they spake to Marcus, a noble knyght, and behyght hym lordshyp of the cyte, and a memoryall in mynde for evermore, yf he wolde defende hem and save the cyte. Thenne Marcus made an hole thrugh the walle, longe er it were daye, for to abyde his crafte to cache this dwerf. And whan it was tyme, the cucko sange, and warned hym of the daye. Thenne Marcus reysed to, and bycause he myght not hytte the dwerf with wepen, he caught hym with his honde, and bare hym into the cyte. And for drede leste he sholde helpe hymselfe with his craft yfhe myght speke, he threwe hym undir the hors feet, and the horse al to-trade hym. And therfor that ymage was made in remem braunce of this dede." Then follows the account of those who called it Q. Curtius. Trevisa's Translation, p. 24. 174 The manner in which national fable swelled its mass of incident in the ancient world, by having recourse to this practice, has been already noticed at page (29). With the Greeks and Romans, every hero whom they found celebrated in a foreign soil for his prowess against wild beasts, robbers or tyrants, was their own divinity Her cules; and every traveller who had touched on a distant coast, Ulysses. This system of appropriating the native traditions of their neighbours was not confined to the ancients. The followers of King Sigurd Iorlafar, who visited Constantinople in the year 1111, on their return from the holy land, brought an account to Norway, that they had seen the images of their early kings the Asæ, the Volsunge, and the Giukings erected in the Hippodrome of the Imperial city. Heimskringla, vol. iii. p. 245. |