lly realistic character of the epic of Charlemagne. But unreal
and ideal as had become the tales of the Round Table, and disconnected
with any national tradition, the time came when even these were not
sufficiently independent of reality to satisfy the capricious
imagination of the later Middle Ages. At the end of the fourteenth
century was written, most probably in Portuguese by Vasco de Lobeira,
the tale of "Amadis de Gaula," which was followed by some forty or fifty
similar books telling the adventures of all the brothers, nephews,
sons, grandsons sons, and great-grandsons, an infinite succession, of
the original Amadis; which, translated into all languages and presently
multiplied by the press, seem to have usurped the place of the Arthurian
stories in feudal countries until well-nigh the middle of the sixteenth
century; and which were succeeded by no more stories of heroes, but by
the realistic comic novels of the type of "Lazarillo de Tormes," and the
buffoon philosophic extravaganzas of "Gargantua." Further indeed it was
impossible to go than did mediaeval idealism in the Amadises. Compared
with them the most fairy-tale-like Arthurian stories are perfect
historical documents. There remains no longer any connection whatsoever
with reality, historical or geographical: the whole world seems to have
been expeditiously emptied of all its contents, to make room for
kingdoms of Gaul, of Rome, of the Firm Island, of Sobradisa, etc., which
are less like the Land West of the Moon and East of the Sun than they
are like Sancho Panza's island. All real mankind, past, present, and
future, has similarly been swept away and replaced by a miraculous race
of Amadises, Lisvarts, Galaors, Gradasilias, Orianas, Pintiquinestras,
Fradalons, and so forth, who flit across our vision, in company with the
indispensable necromancers, fairies, dwarfs, giants, and duennas, like
some huge ballet: things without character, passions, pathos; knights
who are never wounded or killed, princesses who always end with
marrying the right man, enchanters whose heads are always chopped off,
foundlings who are always reinstated in their kingdom, inane paper
puppets bespangled with impossible sentiment, tinsel and rags which are
driven about like chaff by the wind-puffs of romance. The advent of the
Amadises is the coming of the Kingdom of Nonsense, the sign that the
last days of chivalric romance have come; a little more, and the
Licentiate Alonzo Perez wil