But the powers of the chief proportion of needlewomen, and of many of the subsequent tapestry looms were devoted to giving permanence to those fables which, as exhibited in the Romances of Chivalry, formed the very life and delight of our ancestors in
“———that happy season
Ere bright Fancy bent to reason;
When the spirit of our stories,
Filled the mind with unseen glories;
Told of creatures of the air,
Spirits, fairies, goblins rare,
Guarding man with tenderest care.”
These fables, says Warton, were not only perpetually repeated at the festivals of our ancestors, but were the constant objects of their eyes. The very walls of their apartments were clothed with romantic history.
We have mentioned the history of Alexander in Tapestry as forming an important part of the peace offering of the king of France to Bajazet, and probably there were few princes who did not possess a suit of tapestry on this subject; a most important one in romance, and consequently a desired one for the loom.
There seems an innate propensity in the writers of the Romance of Chivalry to exaggerate, almost to distortion, the achievements of those whose heroic bearing needed no pomp of diction, or wild flow of imagination to illustrate it. Thus Charlemagne, one of the best and greatest of men, appears in romance like one whose thirst for slaughter it requires myriads of “Paynims” to quench.
Arthur, on the contrary, a very (if history tell truth) a very “so-so” sort of a man, having not one tithe of the intellect or the magnanimity of him to whom we have just referred—Arthur is invested in romance with a halo of interest and of beauty which is perfectly fascinating; and it seems almost impossible to divest oneself of these impressions and to look upon him only in the unattractive light in which history represents him.
A person not initiated in romance would suppose that the real actions of Alexander—the subjugator of Greece, the conqueror of Persia, the captor of the great Darius, but the generous protector of his family—might sufficiently immortalize him. By no means. He cuts a considerable figure in many romances; but in one, appropriated more exclusively to his exploits, he “surpasses himself.” The world was conquered:—from north to south, and from east to west his sovereignty was acknowledged; so he forthwith flew up into the air to bring the aerial potentates to his feet. But this experiment not answering, he descended to the depths of the waters with much better success; for immediately all their inhabitants, from the whale to the herring, the cannibal shark, the voracious pike, the majestic sturgeon, the lordly salmon, the rich turbot, and the delicate trout, with all their kith, kin, relations, and allies, the lobster, the crab, and the muscle,
“The sounds and seas with all their finny drove”
crowd round him to do him homage: the oyster lays her pearl at his feet, and the coral boughs meekly wave in token of subjection. Doubtless in addition to the legitimate “battles” these exploits, if not fully displayed, were intimated by symbols in the Tapestry.
The Tale of Troy was a very favourite subject for Tapestry, and was found in many noble mansions, especially in France. It has indeed been conjectured, and on sufficient grounds, that the whole Iliad had been wrought in a consecutive series of hangings. Though during the early part of the middle ages Homer himself was lost, still the “Tale of Troy divine” was kept alive in two Latin works, which in 1260 formed the basis of a prose romance by a Sicilian.