lly taken part in the tourney and been killed) should be noticed,
and the piece ends, or rather comes close to an end, with the marriages
which appropriately follow these well-deserved murders. Marriages--not a
marriage only--for King "Lohier" of France most sensibly insists on
espousing the delightful Urraca: and Persewis is consoled for the loss
of Partenopeus by the suit--refused at first and then granted, with the
obviously intense enjoyment of both processes likely in a novice--of his
brother-in-arms, to whom the "Emperor of Byzantium" abandons his own two
counties in France, adding a third in his new empire, and winning by
this generosity almost more popularity than by his prowess.

But, as was hinted, the story does not actually end. There is a great
deal about the festivities, and though the author says encouragingly
that he "will not devise much of breeches," he _does_--and of many other
garments. Indeed the last of his liveliest patches is a mischievous
picture of the Court ladies at their toilette: "Let me see that mirror;
make my head-dress higher; let me show my mouth more; drop the pleat
over the eyes;[74] alter my eyebrows," etc. etc. But beyond the washing
of hands before the feast, this French book that Crapelet printed
fourscore years ago goeth not. Perhaps it was a mere accident; perhaps
the writer had a shrewd notion that whatever he wrote would seem but
stale in its reminder of the night when Partenopeus lay awake, and
seemingly alone, in the enchanted palace--now merely an ordinary place
of splendour and festivity--and when something came to the bed, "step by
step, little by little," and laid itself beside him.

Such are the contents and such some of the special traits and features
of one of the most famous of those romances of chivalry, the reading of
which with anything like the same interest as that taken in Homer,
seemed to the Reverend Professor Hugh Blair to be the most suitable
instance he could hit upon of a total lack of taste. This is a point, of
course, on which each age, and each reader in each age, must judge for
itself and himself. I think the author of the _Odyssey_ (the _Iliad_
comes rather in competition with the chansons than with these romances)
was a better poet than the author of _Partenopeus_, and I also think
that he was a better story-teller; but I do not think that the latter
was a bad story-teller; and I can read him with plenty of interest. So I
can most of his fellows, n