[5] A collection of these romances formed into three folio tomes in manuscript was enriched by seven hundred and forty-seven miniatures, avec les Initiales peintes en or et couleurs. 6093, Roxburgh Cat.
[6] Cat. of the Duke de la Vallière, 4507. Strutt would have done as much for ourselves, but he worked in unrequited solitude with all the passion of the French amateur, but without his “best artists.”
[7] This romance was composed about the year 1200; the present copy was made in 1338. There is also a splendid manuscript with rich and delicate illuminations of the ancient romance of Alexander in prose in the Brit. Mus., Bib. Reg. 15, E. 6.
[8] Campbell’s “Essay on English Poetry.”
[9] Our vernacular literature owes to the unremitting ardour of our laureate recent editions of “La Morte d’Arthur,” “Palmerin of England,” and a new translation from the Portuguese of “Amadis of Gaul.” For readers who are not antiquaries, and who may recoil from the prolixity of the ancient romances, there is a work of their species which may amply gratify their curiosity, and it is of easy acquisition. It is not an unskilful compilation from the romances of chivalry made by Richard Johnson, a noted bookwright in the reign of Elizabeth; it has passed through innumerable editions, and has at last taken its station in the popular library of our juvenile literature. I suspect that the style has been too often altered in the modern editions, which has injured its raciness. It is well known as “The Renowned History of the Seven Champions of Christendom.” The compiler has metamorphosed the Rowland, Oliver, Guy, Bevis, &c., into seven saints or champions of Christendom; but “he has preserved some of the most capital fictions of the old Arabian romance.”—Warton, iii. 63, Ed. 8vo. It may serve as a substitute for the old black-letter romances, being a compendium of their rich or their grotesque fancies; or, as Ritson observes with his accustomed energetical criticism, “It is a compound of superstition, and, as it were, all the lyes in Christendom in one lye, and is in many parts of the country believed at this day to be as true as the gospel.”—“Dissertation on Romance,” xxxiv.
[10] One of the most celebrated romantic histories is “the Troy-book of Guido delle Colonne,” which has been considered as the original of all the later tales of Troy. On the acute suggestion of Tyrwhit, Douce ascertained that this fabulous history, by many regarded as original, is only a Latin translation of a Norman poet,* which Guido passes off as a history collected from Dares and other fictitious authorities, but disingenuously conceals the name of Benoit de Saint Maur, whose works he appears to have found when he came to England. It was a prevalent practice in the middle ages to appropriate a work by a cautious suppression of any mention of the original. Tiraboschi might now be satisfied that Guido delle Colonne was in England, which he doubted, since he now stands charged with only turning into Latin prose the poem of a Norman, that is, an English poet at the court of our Henry the Second.
* Douce’s “Illustrations of Shakspeare.”
[11] In the curious catalogue of these romances in the Roxburgh Library, the cataloguer announced three or four of these pretended authors as “names unknown to any literary historians,” and considered the announcement a literary discovery.
[12] Père Menestrier, “Chevalerie Ancienne et Moderne,” chap. v. On Heralds.
[13] See Bentham’s “History and Antiquities of Ely,” 27.