reek to Europe, almost ceases with the latest poets
of the Anthology.

[Sidenote: _Late Greek romance._]

In what has been called the "ghost" time, however, in that portion of
it which belongs to our present period, there is one shadow that
flutters with a nearer approach to substance than most. Some glance
has been made above at the question, "What was the exact relation
between western romance and that later form of Greek novel-writing of
which the chief relic is the _Hysminias and Hysmine_[180] of
Eustathius Macrembolita?" Were these stories, many of which must be
lost, or have not yet been recovered, direct, and in their measure
original and independent, continuations of the earlier school of Greek
romance proper? Did they in that case, through the Crusades or
otherwise, come under the notice of the West, and serve as stimulants,
if not even directly as patterns, to the far greater achievements of
Western romance itself? Do they, on the other hand, owe something to
models still farther East? Or are they, as has sometimes been hinted,
copies of Western romance itself? Had the still ingenious, though
hopelessly effeminate, Byzantine mind caught up the literary style of
the visitors it feared but could not keep out?

[Footnote 180: Ed. Hercher, _Erotici Scriptores Graeci_ (2 vols.,
Leipzig, 1858), ii. 161-286.]

[Sidenote: _Its difficulties as a subject._]

All these questions are questions exceedingly proper to be stated in a
book of this kind; not quite so proper to be worked out in it, even if
the working out were possible. But it is impossible for two
causes--want of room, which might not be fatal; and want of
ascertained fact, which cannot but be so. Despite the vigorous work of
recent generations on all literary and historical subjects, no one has
yet succeeded, and until some one more patient of investigation than
fertile in theory arises, no one is likely to succeed, in laying down
the exact connection between Eastern, Western, and, as go-between,
Byzantine literature. Even in matters which are the proper domain of
history itself, such as those of the Trojan and Alexandrine
Apocryphas, much is still in the vague. In the case of Western
Romance, of the later Greek stories, and of such Eastern matter as,
for instance, the story of Sharkan and that of Zumurrud and her master
in the _Arabian Nights_, the vague rules supreme. There were, perhaps,
_trouvere_-knights in the garrisons of Edessa or of Jof who coul