Page:Gesta Romanorum - Swan - Hooper.djvu/30

xxii. Quod quidem abunde firmat; quæ de Elepanto Toletano suprà diximus. Sed et indo satis arguimus unde tot voces Arabicæ in Hispanam, subinde sese intulerunt."

We have, then, a complete refutation of Ritson's strongest objection; and perhaps had not the spleen of the writer been more powerful than the good sense and feeling of the man, he never would have hazarded the remark. And if judicial astrology, medicine, and chemistry, were of Arabian origin, and introduced iato Europe a century at least before the crusades; if Pope Gerbert, or Sylvester II., who died 1003, brought the Arabic numerals into France, it is surely reasonable to suppose that these sciences, so intimately connected with magical operations (and with fictions from them) as to confer upon the possessor a title to supernatural agency, would extend their influence to the legendary stories, as well as to the manners of the West, which these very stories are admitted to describe! Yet, after all, it is not to be imagined that the introduction of Eastern invention happened at one time, or in one age; it was rather the growth of many times, and of many ages—continually, though gradually, augmenting, till it attained maturity.

The next hypothesis gives Armorica, or Bretany, as the source of romantic fiction. But to this, the same objections arise that have been started with respect to the rest. Mr. Ellis, in the introduction to his Specimens of Early English Romances, plausibly suggests that all are compatible. He imagines "that the scenes and characters of our romantic histories were very generally, though not exclusively, derived from the Bretons, or from the Welsh of this island; that much of the colouring, and perhaps some particular adventures, may be of Scandinavian origin, and that occasional episodes, together with part of the machinery, may have been borrowed from the Arabians." Which is as much as to say, that each nation contributed something, and very likely they did j but which furnished the greater part, or which originated the whole, is just as obscure as before a "reconciliation" of opinions was projected. This conciliatory system will remind the reader of Boccacio's tale of The Three Rings, "the question of which is yet remaining."

Another supposition attributes the chief source of romantic fiction to classical and mythological authors; that is, to the stories of Greece and Rome, somewhat altered by modern usages. To this belief Mr. Southey and Mr. Dunlop seem to incline. The latter