Page:Alexander and Dindimus (Skeat 1878).djvu/17

 And this plainly shews that the story runs on without any break, as may yet more easily be seen by looking at the context. Moreover, since nothing is lost, the writer of the English note is clearly in error in saying that the English alliterative poem supplies the deficiency. It is not quite easy to account for the blank space, but there it is. We can hardly suppose that it was left for the purpose of introducing an illumination, because the shape of the slender column is unsuited for this. It is more likely that the scribe of the French romance imagined there was a defect in the MS. from which he was copying, and that he left a space in case he should be able to supply it.

The truth is, that the English fragment and the French romance belong to different versions of the story. And even if the English fragment could have been introduced, it is not introduced in quite the best place; neither does it fit properly either at the beginning or the end. If the English scribe had before him a long English poem, we should have been more obliged to him if he had preserved for us more of it; but, as it is, we are thankful that he has given us a part of it. It is not difficult, by a probable conjecture, to account for the present state of things. It would appear that the English scribe, for some reason or other, set some store by the portion of the story which includes the letters of Alexander to Dindimus, and of Dindimus to Alexander. Now he could not find these epistles in the French romance, not because a "process" had "failed", but because that particular romance does not, in any case, include them. Turning to the point where he expected to find them, he observed, not a great way from the most fitting place (but still not quite at the fittest place), a blank page and a half. From this he concluded that the French scribe had omitted the epistles, and thought that the best way of supplying the defect was by copying out a sufficient portion of the English version which he possessed. At the same time, he wished to preserve further a short account of the Gymnosophists, because of the similarity between these philosophers and those of which Dindimus was the king or master. Hence the result which we have in the present poem. It contains just the whole account of the Gymnosophists, and the whole account of the letters between Alexander and Dindimus, but