is the side of it with which
the present work will mainly deal. Thus I shall have a great deal to say
about Scott; very little about Byron, intensely romantic as he was in
many meanings of the word. This will not preclude me from glancing
occasionally at other elements besides medievalism which enter into the
concept of the term "romantic."

Reverting then to our tentative definition--Heine's definition--of
romanticism, as the reproduction in modern art and literature of the life
of the Middle Ages, it should be explained that the expression, "Middle
Ages," is to be taken here in a liberal sense. Contributions to romantic
literature such as Macpherson's "Ossian," Collins' "Ode on the
Superstitions of the Scottish Highlands," and Gray's translations form
the Welsh and the Norse, relate to periods which antedate that era of
Christian chivalry and feudalism, extending roughly from the eleventh
century to the fifteenth, to which the term, "Middle Ages," more strictly
applies. The same thing is true of the ground-work, at least, of ancient
hero-epics like "Beowulf" and the "Nibelungen Lied," of the Icelandic
"Sagas," and of similar products of old heathen Europe which have come
down in the shape of mythologies, popular superstitions, usages, rites,
songs, and traditions. These began to fall under the notice of scholars
about the middle of the last century and made a deep impression upon
contemporary letters.

Again, the influence of the Middle Age proper prolonged itself beyond the
exact close of the medieval period, which it is customary to date from
the fall of Constantinople in 1453. The great romantic poets of Italy,
Boiardo, Ariosto, Tasso, wrote in the full flush of the pagan revival and
made free use of the Greek and Roman mythologies and the fables of Homer,
Vergil, and Ovid; and yet their work is hardly to be described as
classical. Nor is the work of their English disciples, Spenser and
Sidney; while the entire Spanish and English drama of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries (down to 1640, and with an occasional exception,
like Ben Jonson) is romantic. Calderon is romantic; Shakspere and
Fletcher are romantic. If we agree to regard medieval literature, then,
as comprising all the early literature of Europe which drew its
inspiration from other than Greek-Latin sources, we shall do no great
violence to the usual critical employment of the word. I say _early_
literature, in order to exclude such writin