NOTES TO BOOK VII.
Or the Nymph-mother of the silver feet.
'The silver-footed Thetis.'—Homer.
An armèd King—three lions on his shield—
Richard Cœur de Lion;—poetically speaking, the mythic Arthur was the Father of the age of adventure and knighthood—and the legends respecting him reigned with full influence in the period which Richard Cœur de Lion here (generally and without strict prosaic regard to chronology) represents; from the lay of the Troubadour and the song of the Saracen—to the final concentration or chivalric romance in the muse of Ariosto.