soldier of rank
was attired in complete armour, though, perhaps, he never saw a suit
of mail excepting in the Tower of London; and on the same principle of
prescriptive custom, Addison was the first poet who ventured to
celebrate a victorious general for skill and conduct, instead of such
feats as are appropriated to Guy of Warwick, or Bevis of Hampton. The
fashion of attributing mighty effects to individual valour being thus
prevalent, even in circumstances when every one knew the supposition
to be entirely gratuitous, the same principle, with much greater
propriety, continued to be applied in works of fiction, where the
scene was usually carried back to times in which the personal strength
of a champion really had some efficacy. It must be owned, however,
that the authors of the French romances carried the influence of
individual strength and courage beyond all bounds of modesty and
reason. In the Grand Cyrus, Artamenes, upon a moderate computation,
exterminates with his own hand, in the course of the work, at least a
hundred thousand fighting men. These monstrous fictions, however,
constituted the amusement of the young and the gay[1], in the age of
Charles II., and from one of these very books Dryden admits his having
drawn, at least in part, the character of his Moorish warrior. The
public was, therefore, every way familiarised with such chivalrous
exploits as those of Almanzor; and if they did not altogether command
the belief, at least they did not revolt the imagination, of an
audience: And this must certainly be admitted as a fair apology for
the extravagance of his heroic achievements.

But, it is not only the actual effects of Almanzor's valour, which
appear to us unnatural, but also the extraordinary principles and
motives by which those exertions are guided. Here also, we must look
back to the Gothic romances, and to those of Scudery and Calprenede.
In fact, the extravagance of sentiment is no less necessary than the
extravagance of achievement to constitute a true knight errant; and
such is Almanzor. Honour and love were the sole deities worshipped by
this extraordinary race, who, though their memory and manners are
preserved chiefly in works of fiction, did once exist in real life,
and actually conducted armies, and governed kingdoms, upon principles
as strained and hyperbolical as those of the Moorish champion. If
Almanzor, at the command of his mistress, aids his hated rival to the
destruction of his o