ll to be a favourite diversion.
There were annual contentions in the lists in honour of the sovereign,
and twenty-five persons of the first rank established a society of
arms for this purpose, of which the chivalric Sir Henry Lee was for
some time president.

The "romance of chivalry" was sinking to be succeeded by the heavier
tomes of Gomberville, Scudery, &c., but the extension of classical
knowledge, the vast strides in acquirement of various kinds, the utter
change, so to speak, in the system of literature, all contributed to
the downfall of the chivalric romance. Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia
introduced a rage for high-flown pastoral effusions; and now too was
re-born that taste for metaphorical effusion and spiritual romance,
which was first exhibited in the fourth century in the Bishop of
Tricca's romance of "Barlaam and Josaphat," and which now pervaded the
fast-rising puritan party, and was afterwards fully developed in that
unaccountably fascinating work, "The Pilgrim's Progress."
Nevertheless, as yet

"Courted and caress'd,
High placed in hall, a welcome guest,"

the harper poured to lord and lady gay not indeed "his unpremeditated
lay," but a poetical abridgment (the precursor of a fast succeeding
race of romantic ballads) of the doughty deeds of renowned knights, so
amply expatiated upon in the time-honoured folios of the "olden time."
The wandering harper, if fallen somewhat from his "high estate," was
still a recognised and welcome guest; his "matter being for the most
part stories of old time, as the tale of Sir Topas, the reportes of
Bevis of Southampton, Guy of Warwicke, Adam Bell, and Clymme of the
Clough, and such other old romances or historical rhimes." Though the
character of the minstrel gradually lost respectability, yet for a
considerable part of Elizabeth's reign it was one so fully
acknowledged, that a peculiar garb was still attached to the office.

"Mongst these, some bards there were that in their sacred rage
Recorded the descents and acts of everie age.
Some with their nimbler joynts that strooke the warbling string;
In fingering some unskild, but onelie vsed to sing
Vnto the other's harpe: of which you both might find
Great plentie, and of both excelling in their kind."

The superstitions of various kinds, the omens, the warnings, the
charms, the "potent spells" of the wizard seer, which

"Could hold in dreadful thrall the labouring