LETTERS
ON
CHIVALRY AND ROMANCE.

LETTERS
ON
CHIVALRY AND ROMANCE:
SERVING TO ILLUSTRATE SOME
PASSAGES IN THE THIRD DIALOGUE.

Guarda, che mal fato
O giovenil vaghezza non ti meni
Al magazino de le ciancie, ab fuggi,
Fuggi quell incantato alloggiamento.
Quivi habitan le maghe, che incantande
Fan traveder, e traudir ciascuno.
Tasso.

CONTENTS OF THE LETTERS.

Letter I.[The Subject proposed.]
II.[Origin of Chivalry.]
III.[Characteristics of, accounted for.]
IV.[Heroic and Gothic manners, compared.]
V.[Their differences, noted.]
VI.[Gothic manners more poetical, than the Heroic.]
VII.[Their effect on Spenser, Milton, Shakespear.]
VIII.[Fairy Queen criticized—the method of that poem explained and justified.]
IX.[Tasso’s Gier. Lib. considered—history of the Italian poetry.]
X.[Fairy way of writing—vindicated.]
XI.[Gothic poetry, whence fallen into disrepute.]
XII.[Steps of its decline, traced.]

LETTERS
ON
CHIVALRY AND ROMANCE.

LETTER I.

The ages, we call barbarous, present us with many a subject of curious speculation. What, for instance, is more remarkable than the Gothic Chivalry? or than the spirit of Romance, which took its rise from that singular institution?

Nothing in human nature, my dear friend, is without its reasons. The modes and fashions of different times may appear, at first sight, fantastic and unaccountable. But they, who look nearly into them, discover some latent cause of their production.

“Nature once known, no prodigies remain,”