other with plough-shares, and flails; while their defensive armour consisted of great wooden bowls and troughs, by way of helmets and cuirasses. The learned editor seems to have thought this singular composition was, like Don Quixote, with which he compares it, a premeditated effort of satire, written to expose the grave and fantastic manners of the Serious Romance. This is considering the matter too deeply, and ascribing to the author of the Tournament of Tottenham, a more critical purpose than he was probably capable of conceiving. It is more natural to suppose that his only ambition was to raise a laugh, by ascribing to the vulgar the manners and exercises of the noble and valiant; as in the well-known farce of High Life Below Stairs, the ridicule is not directed against the manners described, but against the menials who affect those that are only befitting their superiors. The Hunting of the Hare, published in the collection formed by the late industrious and accurate Mr Weber, is a comic Romance of the same order. A yeoman informs the inhabitants of a country hamlet that he has found a hare sitting, and enquires if there is any gentleman near who keeps greyhounds, for the purpose of coursing her. The villain to whom he communicates this information replies, there is no need of sending for a gentleman's assistance, and proceeds to enumerate the catalogue of ban-dogs, which are the property of himself and the other clowns of the village: "Hob Andrew Y thynke on now, And bryng hur to the cowtte: "Parkyn the potter, hase iij that wyll not fayll; No kalfe so greyt, as Y wene, So has Dykon and Jac Gryme, When the chase is assembled, the yeoman puts up the hare, who with little difficulty makes her escape from the mongrel mastiffs, and breaks a ring which had been formed by the peasants, armed with their great clubs and bats. Great is the terror of the individual over whom she ran in her retreat, and who expected fully that she would have torn his throat out. The inexperienced curs and mastiffs, instead of pursuing the game, commence a battleroyal amongst themselves, their masters take part in the fray, and beat each other soundly. In short, the hunting of the hare, scarce less doleful than that of Cheviot, concludes like the latter, with the women of the village coming to carry off the wounded and slain. It can hardly be supposed the satire is directed against the sport of hunting itself; since the whole ridicule arises out of the want of the necessary knowledge of its rules, incident to the ignorance and inexperience of the clowns, who undertook to practise an art peculiar to gentlemen. The ancient poetry of Scotland furnishes several examples of this ludicrous style of romantic composition; as the Tournament at the Drum, and the Justing of Watson and Barbour, by Sir David Lindsay. It is probable that these mock encounters were sometimes acted in earnest; at least King James I. is accused of witnessing such practical jests; "sometimes presenting David Droman and Archie Armstrong, the King's fool, on the back of other fools, to tilt at one another till they fell together by the ears."-(Sir Anthony Weldon's Court of King James.) In hastily noticing the various divisions of the Romance, we have in some degree delayed our promised account of its rise and progress; an enquiry which we mean chiefly to confine to the Romance of the middle ages. It is indeed true that this species of composition is common to almost all nations, and that even if we deem the Iliad and Odyssey compositions too dignified by the strain of poetry in which they are composed to bear the name of Metrical Romances; yet we have the Pastoral Romance of Daphnis and Chloe, and the Historical Romance of Theagenes and Chariclea, which are sufficiently accurate specimens of that style of composition. The Milesian Fables and the Romances of Antonius Diogenes, described by Photius, could they be recovered, would also be found to belong to the same class. It is impossible to avoid noticing that the Sybarites, whose luxurious habits seem to have been intellectual, as well as sensual, were peculiarly addicted to the perusal of the Milesian Fables; from which we may conclude that the narratives were not of that severe kind which inspired high thoughts and martial virtues. But there would be little advantage derived from extending our researches into the ages of classical antiquity respecting a class of compositions, which, though they existed then, as in almost every stage of society, were neither so numerous nor of such high repute as to constitute any considerable portion of that literature. Want of space also may entitle us to dismiss the consideration of the Oriental Romances, unless in so far as in the course of the middle ages they came to furnish materials for enlarging and varying the character of the Romances of knight-errantry. That they existed early, and were highly esteemed both among the Persians and Arabians, has never been disputed; and the most interesting light has been lately thrown on the subject by the publication of Antar, one of the most ancient, as well as most rational, if we may use the phrase, of the Oriental fictions. The Persian Romance of the Sha-Nameh is well known to Europeans by name, and by copious extracts; and the love-tale of Méjnoun and Leilah is also familiar to our ears, if not to our recollections. Many of the fictions in the extraordinary collection of the Arabian Tales, that of Codadad and his brethren, for example, approach strictly to the character of Romances of Chivalry; although in general they must be allowed to exceed the more tame northern fictions in dauntless vivacity of invention, and in their more strong tendency to the marvellous. Several specimens of the Comic Romance are also to be found mingled with those which are serious; and we have the best and most 1 [Antar, a Bedoueen Romance, translated from the Arabic, by Terrick Hamilton, Esq., 4 vols. 8vo. London 1819.] positive authority that the recital of these seductive fictions is at this moment an amusement as fascinating and general among the people of the East, as the perusal of printed Romances and novels among the European public. But a minute investigation into this particular species of Romance would lead us from our present field, already sufficiently extensive for the limits to which our plan confines it. The European Romance, wherever it arises, and in whatever country it begins to be cultivated, had its origin in some part of the real or fabulous history of that country; and of this we will produce, in the sequel, abundant proofs. But the simple tale of tradition had not passed through many mouths, ere some one, to indulge his own propensity for the wonderful, or to secure by novelty the attention of his audience, augments the meagre chronicle with his own apocryphal inventions. Skirmishes are elevated into great battles; the champion of a remote age is exaggerated into a sort of demi-god; and the enemies whom he encountered and subdued are multiplied in number, and magnified in strength, in order to add dignity to his successes against them. Chanted to rhythmical numbers, the songs which celebrate the early valour of the fathers or the tribe becomes its war-cry in battle, and men march to conflict hymning the praises and the deeds of some real or supposed precursor who had marshalled their fathers in the path of victory. No reader can have forgotten, that when the decisive battle of Hastings commenced, a Norman minstrel, Taillefer, advanced on horseback before the inva |