Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/507

 LEGENDS OF CHIVALRY. 475 The same mythopoeic vein, and the same susceptibility and facility of belief, which had created both supply and demand fof the legends of the Saints, also provided the abundant stock of romantic narrative poetry, in amplification and illustration of the chivalrous ideal. What the legends of Troy, of Thebes, of the Kalydonian boar, of OEdipus, Theseus, etc. were to an early Greek, the tales of Arthur, of Charlemagne, of the Niebelungen, were to an Englishman, or Frenchman, or German, of the twelfth or thirteenth century. They were neither recognized fiction nor authenticated history : they were history, as it is felt and wel- comed by minds unaccustomed to investigate evidence, and un- conscious of the necessity of doing so. That the Chronicle of Turpin, a mere compilation of poetical legends respecting Charle- magne, was accepted as genuine history, and even pronounced to be such by papal authority, is well known ; and the authors of the Romances announce themselves, not less than those of the old Grecian epic, as being about to recount real matter of fact. 1 (t is certain that Charlemagne is a great historical name, and it 1 See Warton's History of English Poetry, vol. i. dissert, i. p. xvii. Again, wi sect. iii. p. 140: : ' Vincent de Bcauvais, who lived under Louis IX. of France ("about 1260), and who, on account of his extraordinary erudition, v/as appointed preceptor to that king's sons, very gravely classes Archbishop Turpin's Charlemagne among the real histories, and places it on a level n'ith Suetonius and Caesar. He was himself an historian, and has left a large history of the world, fraught with a variety of reading, and of high repute in the Middle Ages ; but edifying and entertaining as this work might have been to his contemporaries, at present it serves only to record their prejudices and to characterize their credulity." About the full belief in Arthur and the Tales of the Round Table during the fourteenth century, and about the strange historical mistakes of the poet Gower in the fifteenth, see the same work, sect. 7. vol. ii. p. 33 ; sect. 19. vol. ii. p. 239. " L'auteur de la Chronique de Turpin (says M. Sismondi, Litterature du Midi, vol. i. ch. 7. p. 289) n'avait point 1'intention de briller aux yeux du public par une invention heureuse, ni d'amuser les oisifs par des contes mer- vcilleux qu'ils reconnoitroient pour tels : il pre'sentait aux Fran<jais tous ces fails etranges comme de 1'histoire, et la lecture des le'gendes fabuleuses avail accoutume a croire a. de plus grandes merveilles encore; aussi plusieurs da ees fables furent elles reproduces dans la Chronique de St. Denis." Again, ib. p. 290 : * Souvent les anciens romanciers, lorsqu'ils entreprennent an rccit de la cour de Charlemagne, prennent un ton plus elcve: ce nc sont point des faMes qu'iU vont coutcr, c'est de 1'histoire nationale, c'cst la