nine days and nights under water and exist nine days and nights without sleep. "Very subtle was Kai," says the old poem; "he could make himself as tall as the highest tree in the forest." In Geoffrey of Monmouth Arthur has his sword Caliburn (Excalibur), against which armor might not avail. Wace is the first author to mention the Round Table, which was made to settle all disputes about precedence among Arthur's knights. Layamon adds the information that, though it would seat 1600 men, it could be carried by Arthur wherever he rode. From all this it can be seen that when, in later generations, Sir Thomas Malory wrote his "Morte d' Arthur" and Tennyson produced the "Idylls of the King," they were dealing with old materials. As Matthew Arnold says, they were like peasants building on the site of Halicarnassus or Ephesus; they built, but what they built was full of stones of an earlier building. And through the whole history of the great legend we can hear a sound that is not Saxon, or Welsh, or Norman-a sound that is new, which is English "The horns of Elfland faintly blowing." The lyric poetry of England also had its beginning in the thirteenth century. To the Saxon, nature had been a source of terror; he had regarded with dread the beasts of the field and the monsters of the deep. The feeling of the modern dweller in cities is diametrically opposite; he believes that God made the country and man made the town; he loves the sea and the sky. One of the earliest and finest illustrations of this change of attitude toward nature is seen in the following song, which was written about 1250: "Sumer is i-cumen in, Lhude sing cuccu! Groweth sed and bloweth med, And springeth the wde nu. Awe bleteh after lomb, Bulluc sterteth, bucke verteth. Murie sing cuccu!" Summer is coming in; Sing loud, cuckoo! Groweth seed and bloweth mede, Ewe bleateth after lamb; Loweth after calf cow. Bullock starteth; buck darteth. "If summer had not yet' come in,' says A. R. Waller, spring at any rate was well on the way when verses like these became possible." Contemporaneous with the development of the Arthurian legend we find another phenomenon which strikes one as equally modern and equally characteristic of modern English-speaking peoples-that fondness for silly stories which is so pronounced a trait of the English and Americans of to-day. From 1200 to 1500 a great number of bad metrical romances were written and read by our forefathers. Of these "Sir Bevis " reminds one most of the best-sellers of to-day. It contains all of the elements that characterize the worst and best tales of its class. The hero's father is murdered; the hero is disinherited; a Paynim princess woos him; he carries a treacherous letter, bearing with him his own death; he is separated from his wife and children; he is exiled. There are also giant and a dragon, which were as necessary in those days as are to-day a hero with a future and a heroine with a past. In another of these tales, "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," Gawain strikes off the head of the Green Knight, whereupon the trunk picks up the head and challenges Gawain to meet him a year hence. In a third, Richard Cœur de Lion feasts on Saracens and provides the same dish for Saracen ambassadors. The plots in several of these tales are quite as good, too, as those of many popular modern novels. Their like can be found in the legends of France and Germany; indeed, the best way to get a clear idea of their intrinsic foolishness is to read Mark Twain's delicious modernization of one of the silliest of the latter, the legend of the "Spectacular Ruin," which, in brief, is as follows: "A dragon lived in that region and made more trouble than a tax-collector. He was as long as a railway train and had the customary green scales all over him. He ate men and cattle impartially and was exceedingly unpopular. The German emperor had a surplusage of daughters and it was customary for dragon-killers to take a daughter for pay, so he offered one of them as a reward to anyone who would destroy the monster. The most renowned knights came therefore from the four quarters of the earth and retired one by one down the dragon's throat. At last Sir Wissenschaft arrived to do battle with the pestilence. Like most heroes in the early chapters of romances, he was unprepossessing. His armor hung in rags about him and instead of a sword he carried a knapsack. He was received with tolerance but not enthusiasm, and given a bed in the servants' quarters. Next day he met the dragon, who breathed forth volumes of sulphurous smoke and lurid blasts of flame, whereupon the ragged knight unslung his knapsack, which was simply the common fireextinguisher known to modern times, and turned the hose square into the middle of his enemy's cavernous mouth. Out went the fires and the dragon curled up and died. Instead of a daughter, however, the victor demanded a monopoly of the spectacle trade of Germany and an imperial decree that all Germans wear spectacles, whether they needed them or not. Thus originated the legend of the monopolist's once stately castle, the Spectacular Ruin.'" From this charge of silliness, however, must be excepted one work of fiction that belongs to this period, the "Travels of Sir John Mandeville." It was long supposed that Sir John was a real man, like Christopher Columbus; but modern scholars have discovered that, like Robinson Crusoe or David Copperfield, he is only a skilfully depicted character in what is really one of the great romances of all time. The story of the composition of this work has not yet been entirely deciphered; perhaps it never will be; this much, however, is fairly well established: About 1356 a Frenchman named Jean d'Outremeuse wrote at Liège a French version of Sir John's Travels. In the preface he said that Sir John Mandeville, Knight, of St. Albans, had left England in 1322, to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem; had travelled until 1343 in sundry lands; on his return home had been laid up at Liège with gout; had been attended in his illness by a local physician; and at the latter's suggestion had written an account of his travels to solace his enforced idleness. The local physician is probably a myth; the rest of this story almost surely is. The work thus given to the public is not a book of travels at all, but a work of fiction. The author never travelled farther than the local library. He takes no account of time. Some of his observations on Palestine are wrong by three centuries. A note he gives on Ceylon was made by Cæsar on the Britons; some of his science comes from Pliny; he even steals from Homer. The important fact is that the author, whoever he was, succeeded in producing one of the most agreeable volumes ever written, a volume that for five centuries has been a household word in eleven languages and that is still easy and pleasant reading. Though the English version is only a translation, it is one of the most important books in the language. Of its 34 chapters, the first twenty, roughly speaking, are grouped around the idea of a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The rest deal with Java, Cathay, the Tartarians, Persia, and India. Among the topics treated are: the Way out of England to Constantinople; Ypocras's Daughter, transformed from a Woman to a Dragon; how Roses came first into the World; three ways to Jerusalem-by land and sea, mostly by land, and all by land; how the Soldan reasoned me; the land where women dwell without company of men; three manner of growing pepper upon one tree; the Well that changeth his odour every hour, and that is marvel; how the earth and the sea be of round form and shape, by proof of the star that is clept Antarctic; wherefore the Emperor of Ind is clept Prester John. The only way to get an adequate idea of the book is to read it, and this is neither a hard nor unpleasant task. Some slight notion of its character may, however, be obtained from a few quotations: "This river of Danube is a full great river, and it goeth into Almayne under the hills of Lombardy, and it receiveth into him forty other rivers, and it runneth through Hungary and through Greece and through Thrace, and it entereth into the sea so rudely and sharply that the water of the sea is fresh and holdeth his sweetness twenty mile within the sea." "At Constantinople is the cross of our Lord Jesu Christ and his coat without seams, that is clept (called) Tunica inconsutilis (coat unsewed), and the sponge, and the reed, of the which the Jews gave our Lord eysell and gall, in the cross. And there is one of the nails, that Christ was nailed with on the cross." "The tree of the cross, that we call cypress, was of that tree that Adam ate the apple off." "Babylon sitteth upon the river of Gyson, sometimes clept Nile, that cometh out of Paradise terrestrial. . . And forasmuch as it ne raineth not in that country, therefore in that country be the good astronomers, for they find there no clouds to letten them. . At Cairo is a house that is all full of small furnaces, and thither bring women of the town their eyren (eggs) of hens, of geese, and of ducks for to be put into those furnaces. And at the end of three weeks or of a month they come again and take their chickens. Also in that country men find long apples and men clepe them apples of Paradise; and they be right sweet and of good savour. And though ye cut them in never so many gobbets, everymore ye shall find in the midst the figure of the Holy Cross of our Lord Jesu. And men find there also the apple tree of Adam, that have a bite at one of the sides." "In Ethiopia be many diverse folk; and Ethiopia is clept Cusis. In that country be folk that have but one foot, and they go so blyve that it is marvel. And the foot is so large that it shadoweth all the body against the sun, when they will lie and rest them." "The earth is full large and full great, and holds in roundness and about environ, by above and beneath, after the opinion of old wise astronomers, 20425 miles; and their sayings I reprove nought. But, after my little wit, it seemeth me, saving their reverence, that it is more." "In that country and by all Ind be great plenty of cockodrills, that is a manner of a long serpent. These serpents slay men and they eat them weeping; and when they eat they move the upper jaw, and not the nether jaw, and they have no tongue." "Of Paradise I cannot speak properly. For I was not there." And ye shall understand, if it like you, that at mine homecoming I came to Rome and shewed my life to our holy father the pope, and was assoiled of all that lay in my conscience, of many a diverse grievous point. And I, John Mandeville, knight, abovesaid, although I be unworthy, that departed from our countries and passed the sea, the year of grace a thousand three hundred and twenty-two, now I am come home, maugre myself, to rest, for gouts artetykes that me distrain, that define the end of my labour; against my will (God knoweth)." Still more characteristically English and modern, however, are several books of this period that deal with moral and religious topics. |