So runs the pleasing tale of Nicephorus. But alas! the relentless voice of modern research will have it that the real author was not the bishop at all, but a Sophist who lived in the third century of our era. Be it as it may, I for my part shall go on believing the old romantic tale until a better one is invented for the Sophist.
The work itself is called 'Ten Books of Aethiopian History,' for the first and last scenes are laid in Egypt, but it is better known by the name of its hero and heroine. Its popularity was immense, and it was soon translated into 'almost all languages.' Later Père Amyot published a version in French for Francis i., who was so delighted with the result that he made the translator abbé of Belozane. Racine tells us it was this ancient romance that first fired his imagination with the desire to write. His tutor discovered him absorbed in its contents, and snatching it from his hand angrily consigned it to the fire. Racine bought another copy, which suffered a like fate. But so strong a hold upon him had the story, that he purchased a third, and devoured it in secret, offering it to his master with a smile when he had thoroughly mastered its contents.
It seems that this ancient Greek romance was lost for many centuries. At the sack of Buda in 1526, however, a manuscript of it was discovered in the royal library, where it had once formed part of the vast library amassed by Matthias Corvinus, the great King of Hungary. Matthias is said to have 'spoken almost all the European languages,' so doubtless he had passed many a pleasant hour with the tale. This manuscript (others have since been discovered) was printed at Basel 'in officina Ioan Hervagii' in 1534, a small quarto printed with Greek types.[32]
That the early romances of chivalry possess a charm for the book-collector it is impossible to deny. They are 'a series of books,' writes Mr. John Ormsby, 'which, complete, would be a glory to any library in the world; which, in first editions, would now probably fetch a sum almost large enough to endow a college; and which . . . . is perhaps . . . . as worthless a set of books as could be made up out of the refuse novels of a circulating library.' Times without number they have been derided and decried, even in the days when they were popular. The curate of La Mancha was not the only one who disapproved of them. 'In our fathers tyme,' wrote old Roger Ascham, judging the flock by a few black sheep, 'nothing was red, but bookes of fayned cheualrie, wherein a man by redinge, shuld be led to none other ende, but onely to manslaughter and baudrye.' Possevino, a learned Jesuit and famous preacher of the sixteenth century, used to complain that for the last five hundred years the princes of Europe had read nothing but romances. René d'Anjou listened to his chaplain inveighing against Launcelot, Amadis, and the romances of which he was particularly fond; but, says Villeneuve, while respecting the preacher for his boldness, the king continued to read them, and even composed new volumes in imitation of them.[33]
Full of monstrous fictions some of these ancient stories undoubtedly are. It were foolish to expect that all of them should attain the high level of those great legends which centre about the Holy Grail. Good things have ever been imitated indifferently; and it was only the later series of tales which had to do chiefly with enchantments and fairies and 'giaunts, hard to be beleeved.' But alas! all alike have come under the ban of those who decry reading for recreation's sake. Good and bad have been damn'd indifferently. One cannot help wondering however that so much has been written against them, and that so many have been at pains to point out their unreasonableness. One would have thought that the very fact of them all abounding with incidents that are not only impossible but preposterous, would have given these critics pause, and have urged them to ask themselves why and wherefore such things were repeated.
To anyone possessed of imagination the answer, of course, is obvious. The better tales all had the exaltation of the chivalric spirit in view, and sought to achieve this end by allegory as well as by parable. He must be a dullard indeed who fails to understand their symbolism. Malory, describing the entry of Tristram into the field, wishes to impress upon us the fact that he was indeed a 'preux chevalier, sans peur et sans reproche,' the model of a Christian knight; so he mounts him on a white horse and arrays him in white harness, and he rides out at a postern, 'and soo he came in to the feld as it had ben a bryght angel.' Doubtless those to whom understanding has been denied would argue hotly as to whether there is any authority for a knight painting his armour white. What sane man, reading 'The Faerie Queene,' could think that it purported to depict actual scenes or incidents? Yet time and again the 'sheer impossibility' of these stories has been urged in condemnation of them. Truly it is not every man who should turn to these ancient books which
'In sage and solemn tunes have sung
Of Turneys and of Trophies hung,
Of Forests, and inchantments drear,
Where more is meant than meets the ear.'
Gavaudan, a troubadour of the twelfth century, meets the undiscerning critic more than half-way. Let none judge, he writes, till he be capable of separating the grain from the chaff; 'for the fool makes haste to condemn, and the ignorant only pretends to know all things, and muses on the wonders that are too mighty for his comprehension.'
'Romances,' says Sharon Turner, 'are so many little Utopias, in which the writer tries to paint or to inculcate something which he considers to be more useful, more happy or more delightful, more excellent or more interesting, than the world he lives in, than the characters he surveys, or the events or evils which he experiences.' Yet Dunlop, who examined the romances of chivalry at some length in his 'History of Fiction,' seems never to have suspected that these tales were written with any other intention than to amuse or that the events which they related were looked upon by their readers as other than facts. For Arthur he has scant respect, 'nor,' says he, 'as we advance, do we find him possessed of a single quality, except strength and courage, to excite respect or interest.' Surely the remark of one who must have been dead to all sense of imagination and romance—although purporting to be an authority upon them! The teaching of the whole Arthurian cycle of romances was 'that noble men may see and lerne the noble actes of chyualrye, the Ientyl and vertuous dedes that somme Knyghtes vsed in tho dayes, by whyche they came to honour; and how they that were vycious were punysshed and ofte put to shame and rebuke.' The quest of the Holy Grail, motive of the most exquisite series of mystic tales that has ever been written, was, we are expressly informed, 'the hygh way of our Lord Jhesu Cryst, and the way of a true good lyver, not that of synners and of mysbelievers.' Godfrey de Bouillon, the hero of another cycle, was 'moult preudhomme et sage et moult aymant Dieu et gens d'esglise,' as we read in 'Le Triomphe des Neuf Preux' (folio, Abbeville 1487). Preposterous tales? Perhaps; yet, as regards their moral side, not suffering greatly by comparison with our modern fiction.
Those whose reading is confined to the literature of to-day can have no idea of the influence which these romances had upon the lives of our forefathers. It was not merely a system of morality which they taught, it was a civilisation of a very high order. When we are inclined to mock at these 'preposterous tales' we should never forget that to them we owe a debt so immense that we are lost in the contemplation of it. It cannot be gainsaid that it was as much by the study and teaching of these romances as it was by the spirit which gave them birth, that our ancestors came to mould their lives in such a sort as to influence the civilisation of the whole of the western world.
