ard III. of England, set out--like St. Brandan--on a
voyage in search of a land that is free from death. They cross the
Western ocean, and after long years of wandering, come, disappointed of
their hope, to a city founded centuries since by exiles from ancient
Greece. There being hospitably received, hosts and guests interchange
tales in every month of the year; a classical story alternating with a
mediaeval one, till the double sum of twelve is complete. Among the
wanderers are a Breton and a Suabian, so that the mediaeval tales have a
wide range. There are Norse stories like "The Lovers of Gudrun"; French
Charlemagne romances, like "Ogier the Dane"; and late German legends of
the fourteenth century, like "The Hill of Venus," besides miscellaneous
travelled fictions of the Middle Age.[48] But the Hellenic legends are
reduced to a common term with the romance material, so that the reader is
not very sensible of a difference. Many of them are selected for their
marvellous character, and abound in dragons, monsters, transformations,
and enchantments: "The Golden Apples," "Bellerophon," "Cupid and Psyche,"
"The Story of Perseus," etc. Even "Jason" is treated as a romance. Of
its seventeen books, all but the last are devoted to the exploits and
wanderings of the Argonauts. Medea is not the wronged, vengeful queen of
the Greek tragic poets, so much as she is the Colchian sorceress who
effects her lover's victory and escape. Her romantic, outweighs her
dramatic character. Sea voyages, emprizes, and wild adventures, like
those of his own wanderers in "The Earthly Paradise," were dearer to
Morris' imagination than conflicts of the will; the _vostos_ or
home-coming of Ulysses, _e.g._ He preferred the "Odyssey" to the
"Iliad," and translated it in 1887 into the thirteen-syllabled line of
the "Nibelungenlied." [49] Of the Greek tales in "The Earthly Paradise,"
"The Love of Alcestis" has, perhaps, the most dramatic quality.

Like Chaucer and like Rossetti,[50] Morris mediaevalised classic fable.
"Troy," says his biographer, "is to his imagination a town exactly like
Bruges or Chartres, spired and gabled, red-roofed, filled (like the city
of King Aeetes in 'The Life and Death of Jason') with towers and swinging
bells. The Trojan princes go out, like knights in Froissart, to tilt at
the barriers." [51] The distinction between classical and romantic
treatment is well illustrated by a comparison of Theocritus' idyl
"Hylas