Progress of Fiction from the East to the West—The Early Christians—The Monks—The Spanish Arabians—The Crusades—The Knight and the King of Hungary—The English Gesta.
“Admitting the East as the immediate source of fiction,” said Henry Herbert, when they were met once more, “you must still regard the Spanish Arabians as the great disseminators of those extravagant inventions which were so peculiar to their romantic and creative genius.”
“Less, perhaps, than many other sources. The absence of Moorish subjects from the earliest tales of chivalry, if it proves no more, at least shows how prevalent the tales of Charlemagne and his peers were in the eighth century, that a nation of conquerors could do little to infect them with legends of their own.”
“How and when, then, Lathom, would you introduce Eastern invention?” asked Thompson.
“I would refer it to much earlier ages, to the earliest of the Christian centuries, and contend that it was gradual, and therefore more natural; was the production of times and of ages, not the sudden birth and growth of one age; gradually augmenting until it attained to full and perfect stature.”
“Still,” rejoined Herbert, “we want the means by which this knowledge of Eastern fable was introduced.”
“Some share may be due to the return of those primitive Christians who sought refuge in the East from the persecutions of the pagan rulers of the West. Their minds were well prepared to adopt the fervent expressions of the East, and their condition prevented them from investigating the tales they heard. Hence, in the lives of these saints they were as ready to interweave the prodigies of another land, hoping, perhaps, to conciliate the minds of the Eastern Oriental to the tenets of their faith, by introducing fictitious incidents of Oriental structure, as, to conciliate the heathen, they placed their gods and goddesses in the Christian temple, dignifying them with a new name, and serving them with novel ceremonies.”
“Admitting the probability, still your machinery seems deficient.”
“It is but a portion of my machinery. Much more was due to the clouds of monks, who, during the third and fourth centuries, wandered over the face of the habitable world.”
“When Gibbon admits that the progress of monachism was co-extensive with that of Christianity,” suggested Frederick Thompson.