artly under English rule proper, partly under
Scottish, partly under that of the feudatories or allies of the
English kings as Dukes of Normandy--has to support it not merely the
arguments stated above as to the concentration of the legend proper
between Troyes and Herefordshire, between Broceliande and Northumbria,
as to MS. authority, as to the inveteracy of the legend in
English,--not only those negative ones as to the certainty that if it
were written by Englishmen it would be written in French,--but
another, which to the comparative student of literary history may seem
strongest of all.

Here first, here eminently, and here just at the time when we should
expect it, do we see that strange faculty for exhibiting a blend, a
union, a cross of characteristics diverse in themselves, and giving
when blended a result different from any of the parts, which is more
than anything else the characteristic of the English language, of
English literature, of English politics, of everything that is
English. Classical rhetoric, French gallantry, Saxon religiosity and
intense realisation of the other world, Oriental extravagance to some
extent, the "Celtic vague"--all these things are there. But they are
all co-ordinated, dominated, fashioned anew by some thing which is
none of them, but which is the English genius, that curious,
anomalous, many-sided genius, which to those who look at only one side
of it seems insular, provincial, limited, and which yet has given us
Shakespeare, the one writer of the world to whom the world allows an
absolute universality.

CHAPTER IV.

ANTIQUITY IN ROMANCE.

ODDITY OF THE CLASSICAL ROMANCE. ITS IMPORTANCE. THE TROY
STORY. THE ALEXANDREID. CALLISTHENES. LATIN VERSIONS. THEIR
STORY. ITS DEVELOPMENTS. ALBERIC OF BESANCON. THE
DECASYLLABIC POEM. THE GREAT "ROMAN D'ALIXANDRE." FORM, ETC.
CONTINUATIONS. "KING ALEXANDER." CHARACTERISTICS. THE TALE
OF TROY. DICTYS AND DARES. THE DARES STORY. ITS ABSURDITY.
ITS CAPABILITIES. TROILUS AND BRISEIDA. THE 'ROMAN DE
TROIE.' THE PHASES OF CRESSID. THE 'HISTORIA TROJANA.'
MEANING OF THE CLASSICAL ROMANCE.

[Sidenote: _Oddity of the Classical Romance._]

As the interest of Jean Bodel's first two divisions[68] differs
strikingly, and yet represents, in each case intimately and
indispensably, certain sides of the mediaeval character, so also does
that of his third. This has perhaps more purely an interest