things of Life, and Love, and Death, of the
half-known God and the unknown Hereafter. It is this which gives to
Romance, and to mediaeval work generally, that "high seriousness," the
want of which was so strangely cast at it in reproach by a critic who,
I cannot but think, was less intimately acquainted with its literature
than with that either of classical or of modern times. Constantly in
mediaeval poetry, very commonly in mediaeval prose, the great things
appear greatly. There is in English verse romance perhaps no less
felicitous sample of the kind as it stands, none which has received
greater vituperation for dulness and commonplace, than _Sir Amadas_.
Yet who could much better the two simple lines, when the hero is
holding revel after his ghastly meeting with the unburied corse in the
roadside chapel?--

"But the dead corse that lay on bier
Full mickle his thought was on."

In Homer's Greek or Dante's Italian such a couplet (which, be it
observed, is as good in rhythm and vowel contrast as in simple
presentation of thought) could hardly lack general admiration. In the
English poetry of the Middle Ages it is dismissed as a commonplace.

Yet such things, and far better things, are to be met everywhere in
the literature which, during the period we have had under review, took
definite form and shape. It produced, indeed, none of the greatest
men of letters--no Chaucer nor Dante, no Froissart even, at best for
certainties a Villehardouin and a William of Lorris, a Wolfram and a
Walther, with shadowy creatures of speculation like the authors of the
great romances. But it produced some of the greatest matter, and some
of not the least delightful handlings of matter, in book-history. And
it is everywhere distinguished, first, by the adventurous fecundity of
its experiments in form and kind, secondly, by the presence of that
spirit which has been adumbrated in the last paragraph. In this last,
we must own, the pupil countries far outdid their master or mistress.
France was stronger relatively in the spirit of poetry during the
Middle Ages than she has been since; but she was still weaker than
others. She gave them expression, patterns, form: they found passion
and spirit, with not seldom positive story-subject as well. When we
come upon some _nueva maestria_, as the old Spanish poet called it,
some cunning trick of form, some craftsman-like adjustment of style
and kind to literary purposes, we shall generally