ers; his army is attacked by
wild beasts unaffrighted by flames, that squat in the midst of the fires
intended to scare them away. He places the corpse of the admiral who
commanded at Babylon in an iron coffin, that four loadstones hold to the
vault. The authors give their imagination full scope; their romances are
operas; at every page we behold a marvel and a change of scene; here we
have the clouds of heaven, there the depths of the sea. I write of these
more than I believe, "equidem plura transcribo quam credo," Quintus
Curtius had already said.[177]

Just as they had curiously inspected their new domains, appropriating to
themselves as much land as possible, so the conquerors inspected the
literatures of their new compatriots. If, as will be seen, they drew
little from the Saxon, it is not because they were absolutely ignorant
of it, but because they never could well understand its genius. Amongst
the different races with which they now found themselves in contact,
they were at once attracted by intellectual sympathy to the Celtic,
whose mind resembled their own. Alexander had been an amusement, Arthur
became a passion. To the Anglo-Norman singers are due the most ancient
and beautiful poems of the Briton cycle that have come down to us.

In the "matter" of France, the heroic valour of the defenders of the
country forms the principal interest of the stories; in the matter of
Rome, the "mirabilia"; and, in the matter of Britain, love. We are
farther and farther removed from Beowulf.

At the time of the Conquest a quantity of legends and tales were current
concerning the Celtic heroes of Britain, some of whom were quite
independent of Arthur; nevertheless all ended by being grouped about
him, for he was the natural centre of all this literature: "The Welsh
have never ceased to rave about him up to our day," wrote the grave
William of Malmesbury in the century after the Conquest; he was a true
hero, and deserved something better than the "vain fancies of dreamers."
William obviously was not under the spell of Arthurian legends.[178]

Wales, Brittany, and Cornwall were the centres where these legends had
developed; the Briton harpists had, by the beauty of their tales, and
the sweetness of their music, early acquired a great reputation. It was
a recommendation for a minstrel to be able to state that he was a
Briton, and some usurped this title, as does Renard the fox, in the
"Roman de Renart."[179]

One thing, how