‘As the knights had obtained permission from his majesty to bring their ladies along with them, the beautiful Yguerne accompanied her husband, the Duke of Tintadiel, to one of these anniversaries. The king became deeply enamoured of the dutchess, and revealed his passion to Ulsius, one of his counsellors. Yguerne withstood all the inducements which Ulsius held forth to prepossess her in favour of his master; and ultimately disclosed to her husband the attachment and solicitations of the king. On hearing this, the duke instantly withdrew from court with Yguerne, and without taking leave of Uter. The king complained of this want of duty to his council, who decided, that the duke should be summoned to court, and if refractory, should be treated as a rebel. As he refused to obey the citation, the king carried war into the estates of his vassal, and besieged him in the strong castle of Tintadiel, in which he had shut himself up. Yguerne was confined in a fortress at some distance, which was still more secure. During the siege, Ulsius informed his master that he had been accosted by an old man, who promised to conduct the king to Yguerne, and had offered to meet him for that purpose on the following morning. Uter proceeded with Ulsius to the rendezvous. In an old blind man whom they found at the appointed place, they recognized the enchanter Merlin, who had assumed that appearance. He bestowed on the king the form of the Duke of Tintadiel, while he endowed himself and Ulsius with the figures of his grace’s two squires. Fortified by this triple metamorphosis, they proceeded to the residence of Yguerne, who, unconscious of the deceit, received the king as her husband.
‘The fraud of Merlin was not detected, and the war continued to be prosecuted by Uter with the utmost vigour. At length the Duke was killed in battle, and the King, by the advice of Merlin, espoused Yguerne. Soon after the marriage she gave birth to Arthur, whom she believed to be the son of her former husband, as Uter had never communicated to her the story of his assumed appearance.
‘After the death of Uter, there was an interregnum in England, as it was not known that Arthur was his son. This Prince, however, was at length chosen King, in consequence of having unfixed from a miraculous stone, a sword which two hundred and one of the most valiant barons in the realm had been singly unable to extract. At the beginning of his reign, Arthur was engaged in a civil war; as the mode of his election, however judicious, was disapproved by some of the Barons, and when he had at length overcome his domestic enemies, he had long wars to sustain against the Gauls and Saxons.
‘In all these contests, the art of Merlin was of great service to Arthur, as he changed himself into a dwarf, a harp player, or a stag, as the interest of his master required; or at least threw on the bystanders a spell to fascinate their eyes, and cause them to see the thing that was not. On one occasion he made an expedition to Rome, entered the King’s palace in the shape of an enormous stag, and in this character delivered a formal harangue, to the utter amazement of one called Julius Cæsar; not the Julius whom the Knight Mars killed in his pavilion, but him whom Gauvaine slew, because he defied King Arthur.
‘At length this renowned magician disappeared entirely from England. His voice alone was heard in a forest, where he was enclosed in a bush of hawthorn: he had been entrapped in this awkward residence by means of a charm he had communicated to his mistress Viviane, who not believing in the spell, had tried it on her lover. The lady was sorry for the accident; but there was no extracting her admirer from his thorny coverture.
‘The earliest edition of this romance was printed at Paris, in three volumes folio, 1498.... Though seldom to be met with, the Roman de Merlin is one of the most curious romances of the class to which it belongs. It comprehends all the events connected with the life of the enchanter, from his supernatural birth to his magical disappearance, and embraces a longer period of interesting fabulous history than most of the works of chivalry.... The language, which is very old French, is remarkable for its beauty and simplicity. Indeed the work bears everywhere the marks of very high antiquity—though it is impossible to fix the date of its composition: It has been attributed to Robert de Borron, to whom many other works of this nature have been assigned; but it is not known at what time this author existed; and indeed he is believed by many, and particularly by Mr. Ritson, to be entirely a fictitious personage’ (Vol. i. p. 178).
Our author has given an amusing enough account, not only of the various prose romances relating to chivalry, but also of those circumstances in the state of the western nations which gave rise to the singular institutions and manners of that proud order, and consequently to this particular species of fiction; and we are moreover instructed in the origin of the marvels with which these fictions abound. The subject has been treated so ably, and in such detail, by former writers, that little new is to be expected; but we have already had occasion to commend our author’s judgment,—who has not confined himself to any one of the theories which have been ingeniously and learnedly maintained on the topic last mentioned, but has shown that they are all founded on truth, and consistent with each other.
We shall now refer the reader to the work itself, of which we have produced abundant specimens. Its multifarious nature is indicated by the title-page; and it contains much curious information, both with regard to the particular romances which are reviewed, and also with regard to the transition of stories from age to age, and from the novelist to the dramatic poet. But we cannot dismiss the subject, without stating briefly one or two additional remarks, which we submit to our author’s consideration in the view of another edition.
It is a material defect that his Reviews are so general, and so uniform in their style, that although we are amused with their pleasantry, they enable us to form but a very imperfect idea of the original compositions. The abridgments of some of the narratives are extremely jejune; and although he has inserted in the Appendix to the first volume some curious passages from the old French romances, and has even been so obliging as to furnish a specimen of John Bunyan’s style in the Pilgrim’s Progress, and of Mrs. Radcliffe’s in the Romance of the Forest, these favoured writers are almost the only ones whom he allows to address us in their own persons. Now it is obvious, that even the detail of all the incidents in a romance would be a very insufficient ground for judging of its merit. If the narrative is not animated, interesting, and impassioned, it is deficient in the essential requisites. But it is Mr. Dunlop who tells all the stories; and he tells them in his own way. He tells them indeed agreeably, and in many cases, we believe, more agreeably than the authors. This, however, is not precisely the entertainment to which we understood ourselves to have been invited. At another time we shall be happy to listen to Mr. Dunlop’s uninterrupted lecture; but on this occasion we expected that he was to introduce us to a great company of literati,—that he was to show them off and draw them out: Yet though they are all eager to talk,—being indeed all of them professed story-tellers, he talks the whole talk himself, and allows very few of the poor gentlemen to put in a word. It is true that he is doing the honours, and consequently we expect that he should prepare us in every case for what we are to hear; but still he should have let the good people speak a little for themselves, and then we might have formed some guess of their mettle. Mr. Ellis has managed this matter better in his specimens of the early metrical romances.
We must likewise observe, that our author is not always sufficiently attentive to make his criticisms intelligible to those who are not acquainted with the original works. Thus, after giving us an outline of the Greek story of Clitophon and Leucippe, he remarks (Vol. i. p. 38) that a number of the incidents are original (how does he know that?) and well imagined; ‘such as the beautiful incident of the Bee, which has been adopted by Tasso and D’Urfé:’ of which mysterious bee we do not hear another syllable either before or afterwards.