s in Spain. _Amadis Of Gaul_ and _Belianis Of Greece_ are, in fact, as
much "racy of the soil" as _Don Quixote_ itself.

There were some simple or devout enough to take the romance for a gospel,
who believed in Amadis as much as in any other hero or saint. In the
_Arte de Galanteria_, written by Francisco de Portugal about the close of
the sixteenth century, it is mentioned that a Portuguese poet, Simon de
Silveira, once swore upon the Evangelists that he believed the whole of
_Amadis_ to be true history. This is capped by another story in the same
book of how a certain knight came home from hunting and found his wife
and daughters dissolved in tears. Asking them what was the matter--whether
any child or relation was dead--they said "No; but Amadis is dead!" They
had come to the 174th chapter of _Lisuarte of Greece_, where the old
Amadis finally dies.

The influence of the _Palmerins_ and of the Carlovingian romances, which
form a class by themselves, was scarcely inferior to that of _Amadis_.
_Palmerin of England_ himself, the patriarch of the family--that "Palm of
England," as Cervantes calls him--may be placed second to his rival in
merit. The difference in spirit is great between the two; for _Amadis_
really is, though in its present form of the fifteenth, of the fourteenth
century, when chivalry was in its early prime; and _Palmerin_ was not
written till the sixteenth century, when the true ideal of knighthood had
already been dimmed by the lust of gold-seeking and religious adventure.
Southey, perhaps, ranks _Palmerin_ too high in the literary scale by
placing it on a level with _Amadis_, and averring that he knew "no
romance and no epic in which suspense is so successfully kept up." Of
their successors, the long line of sons, grandsons and nephews, each more
valiant and puissant than the last, it must be said that they are as
scant of beauty as of grace. In order to keep up the interest of their
readers, the authors of the Primaleons and the Polindos--the Florisels
and the Florisandos--were compelled to put in wonders on an ascending
scale; to pile up adventure upon adventure; to make the dragons fiercer,
the giants huger, the fighting more terrible, and the slaughter more
bloody. The popular appetite, which craved for more and more excitement
with every successive stimulant, could only be fed by inventions so
monstrous that it is a wonder the stomach of the readers of romances of
chivalry did not reject the naus