ic periods with all the
humour left out.

[Sidenote: _Its capabilities._]

Nevertheless it is not really disgraceful to the Romantic period that
it fastened so eagerly on this sorriest of illegitimate epitomes.[84]
Very few persons at that time were in case to compare the literary
merit of Homer--even that of Ovid and Virgil--with the literary merit
of these bald pieces of bad Latin prose. Moreover, the supernatural
elements in the Homeric story, though very congenial to the temper of
the Middle Age itself, were presented and ascribed in such a fashion
that it was almost impossible for that age to adopt them. Putting
aside a certain sentimental cult of "Venus la deesse d'amors," there
was nothing of which the mediaeval mind was more tranquilly convinced
than that "Jubiter," "Appollin," and the rest were not mere fond
things vainly invented, but actual devils who had got themselves
worshipped in the pagan times. It was impossible for a devout
Christian man, whatever pranks he might play with his own religion, to
represent devils as playing the part of saints and of the Virgin,
helping the best heroes, and obtaining their triumph. Nor, audacious
as was the faculty of "transfer" possessed by the mediaeval genius, was
it easy to Christianise the story in any other way. It is perhaps
almost surprising that, so far as I know or remember, no version
exists representing Cassandra as a holy and injured nun, making Our
Lady play the part of Venus to AEneas, and even punishing the
sacrilegious Diomed for wounding her. But I do not think I have heard
of such a version (though Sir Walter has gone near to representing
something parallel in _Ivanhoe_), and it would have been a somewhat
violent escapade for even a mediaeval fancy.

[Footnote 84: The British Museum alone (see Mr Ward's _Catalogue of
Romances_, vol. i.) contains some seventeen separate MSS. of Dares.]

So, with that customary and restless ability to which we owe so much,
and which has been as a rule so much slighted, it seized on the
negative capacities of the story. Dares gives a wretched painting, but
a tolerable canvas and frame. Each section of his meagre narrative is
capable of being worked out by sufficiently busy and imaginative
operators into a complete _roman d'aventures_: his facts, if meagre
and jejune, are numerous. The raids and reprisals in the cases of
Hesione and Helen suited the demands of the time; and, as has been
hinted, the singular interlarding