CHAPTER I.

THE ROMANCE OF CHIVALRY.


I

In the midst of an age of gloom and anarchy, when Feudalism was slowly
building up a new social organization on the ruins of the Roman Empire,
arose that spirit of chivalry, which, in its connection with the
Christian religion, forms so sharp a division between the sentiments of
ancient and modern times. Following closely on the growth of chivalry
as an institution, there came into being a remarkable species of
fiction, which reflected with great faithfulness the character of the
age, and having formed for three centuries the principal literary
entertainment of the knighthood of Europe, left on the new
civilization, and the new literature which had outgrown and discarded
it, lasting traces of its natural beauty. Into the general fund of
chivalric romance were absorbed the learning and legend of every land.
From the gloomy forests and bleak mountains of the North came dark and
terrible fancies, malignant enchanters, and death-dealing spirits,
supposed to haunt the earth and sea; from Arabia and the East came
gorgeous pictures of palaces built of gold and precious stones, magic
rings which transport the bearer from place to place, love-inspiring
draughts, dragons and fairies; from ancient Greece and Rome came
memories of the heroes and mysteries of mythology, like old coins worn
and disfigured by passing, through ages, from hand to hand, but still
bearing a faint outline of their original character. All this mass of
fiction was floating idly in the imaginations of men, or worked as an
embellishment into the rude numbers of the minstrels, when the mediæval