s, of
various dates and values, indeed, ranging from Trogus to Isidore of
Seville, but all historians and not romancers.

In this path, however, comparatively few cared to tread. The
attraction for the twelfth century lay elsewhere. Sometimes a little
of the more authentic matter was combined with the fabulous, and at
least one instance occurs where the author, probably in the thirteenth
century, simply combined, with a frank audacity which is altogether
charming, the popular epitome of Valerius and the sober compilation
just referred to. The better, more famous, and earlier romantic work
is taken straight from, though it by no means confines itself to,
Valerius, the _Historia de Proeliis_, and the _Iter ad Paradisum_.
The results of this handling are enormous in bulk, and in minor
varieties; but they are for general purposes sufficiently represented
by the great _Roman d'Alixandre_[73] in French, the long and
interesting English _King Alisaunder_,[74] and perhaps the German of
Lamprecht. The Icelandic Alexander-Saga, though of the thirteenth
century, is derived from Walter of Chatillon, and so reflects the
comparatively sober side of the story. Of all the others the _Roman
d'Alixandre_ is the most immediate parent.

[Footnote 73: Ed. Michelant, Stuttgart, 1846.]

[Footnote 74: Ed. Weber, _op. cit. sup._, i. 1-327.]

[Sidenote: _Alberic of Besancon._]

There was, indeed, an older French poem than this--perhaps two
such--and till the discovery of a fragment of it six years after the
publication in 1846 of the great _Roman d'Alixandre_ itself by
Michelant, it was supposed that this poem was the original of
Lamprecht's German (or of the German by whomsoever it be, for some
will have it that Lamprecht is simply Lambert li Tors, _v. infra_).
This, however, seems not to be the case. The Alberic fragment[75]
(respecting which the philologists, as usual, fight whether it was
written by a Besancon man or a Briancon one, or somebody else) is
extremely interesting in some ways. For, in the first place, it is
written in octosyllabic _tirades_ of single assonance or rhyme, a very
rare form; in the second, it is in a dialect of Provencal; and in the
third, the author not only does not follow, but distinctly and rather
indignantly rejects, the story of Nectanabus:--

"Dicunt alquant estrobatour
Quel reys fud filz d'encantatour:
Mentent fellon losengetour;
Mai en credreyz nec un de lour."[76]

[Footnote 75: E