Page:Romances of Chivalry on Greek Soil.djvu/15

10 elder son had recently died, and he had set his heart on discovering the younger, who was now heir to the throne. Thus Belthandros returned to his native country and was duly married to the heroine.

In this romance the machinery is the most striking part, and occupies the central place. The Castle of Love, which Belthandros finds near such a familiar place as Tarsus, is undisguised magic—like the forest of Broceliande, or the castle in which Parzival saw the Holy Grail. This magic is more satisfactory than if the experience had been represented as a dream. An improbable dream is less interesting than make-believe reality, provided the illusion is well managed, and this poet has managed it with skill- The idea of the phlogopotamon, the mystery of the flame glancing on the water, which draws Belthandros to the abode of Love, gives his romance a certain poetical distinction. But the machinery is too large and impressive for the rest of the story; we feel that the plot, as it is worked out, is too slight to justify the elaboration of the machinery. In particular, the prediction which Belthandros read in the Castle of Love, that he and Chrysantza would be sundered apart, is fulfilled by their separation for a few hours on the opposite sides of a river. There is here, an inartistic disproportion between the prophecy and the event. There is, too, an almost insolent carelessness in allowing the crude coincidence, by which Belthandros and Chrysantza reach the seashore at the very moment when his father's ship is approaching.

The poem is Greek from beginning to end, in its setting, its descriptions, its ideas. There is nothing in it which we can say must have been due to Western influence. The poet is acquainted with the feudal relations of liegeman and lord, as every Greek was in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. But the