Page:Stilfrid and Brunswik (1879).pdf/11



HE Romances of and his son  belong to the class of chivalrous stories, of which the best known example in our own language is the ‘Morte d’ Arthur’ of Sir Thomas Malory. That of Stilfrid appears worthy to have formed an episode in that beautiful work, while the history of Brunswik, though exceedingly amusing, is fitter company for some of those committed to the flames by the friends of Don Quixote. Stilfrid was originally written in verse, as is very manifest from the constant recurrence of rhymes and measured lines in the original, a phænomenon of which Brunswik exhibits far fewer traces. It is supposed that the writer or writers had in view the exploits of Duke Wratislaw II. of Bohemia, who in 1086 obtained the royal dig-