Page:Popular Tales and Romances of the Northern Nations (Volume 2).djvu/20

8 From one enemy, however, ennui, neither the roof nor the walls, neither the fire-side, nor the temperate enjoyments of the table, could always protect him. The crowd of worthless parasites had disappeared with his wealth, and his former friends knew him no longer. Reading was not, at that time, a general amusement, nor did the people understand how to kill their hours with those brain-sick creations of the fancy, which are usually spun from the shallowest heads. There were neither sentimental, pedagogical, psychological, nor comical romances, neither popular, moral, nor entertaining tales, neither family nor monastic histories, no Robinsons either new or old, and the whole tribe of tiresome, dreaming novel inditers had not then begun to spoil good paper, and impose on printers, the ungrateful task of labouring for the grocers and tobacconists. Noble knights, indeed, even then broke their lances, and jousted in tournaments, Dietrich of Berne, Hildebrand, and Siegfried the Horny, Rumbold the Strong, went in search of dragons and other monsters, and slew giants and dwarfs, each of whom was