to himself. But Horn has a faithless friend also; and rivals, and
adventures, and journeys; and returns just in the nick of time, and
recognitions by rings, and everything that can properly be desired
occur. In these--even more perhaps than in Havelok's more masculine and
less sentimental fortunes--there are openings not entirely neglected by
the romancer (though, as has been said, he does not seem to have been
one of the strongest of his kind) for digression, expatiation,
embroidery. Transpose these two stories (as the slow kind years will
teach novelists inevitably to do) into slightly different keys,
introduce variations and episodes and _codas_, and you have the
possibilities of a whole library of fiction, as big and as varied as any
that has ever established itself for subscribers, and bigger than any
that has ever offered itself as one collection to buyers.

The love-stories of these two tales are what it is the fashion--exceedingly
complimentary to the age referred to if not to the age of the fashion
itself--to call "mid-Victorian" in their complete "propriety."
Indeed, it is a Puritan lie, though it seems to possess the vivaciousness
of its class, that the romances are distinguished by "bold bawdry."
They are on the contrary rather singularly pure, and contrast, in
that respect, remarkably with the more popular folk-tale. But fiction,
no more than drama, could do without the [Greek: amarthia]--the
human and not unpardonable frailty. This appears in, and complicates,
the famous story of _Tristram_, which, though its present English form
is probably younger than _Havelok_ and _Horn_, is likely to have existed
earlier: indeed must have done so if Thomas of Erceldoune wrote on the
subject. Few can require to be told that beautiful and tragical history
of "inauspicious stars" which hardly any man, of the many who have
handled it in prose and verse, has been able to spoil. Our Middle
English form is not consummate, and is in some places crude in manner