CHAPTER III.
Progress of Fiction from the East to the West—The Early Christians—The Monks—The Spanish Arabians—The Crusades—The Knight and the King of Hungary—The English Gesta.
“Admitting the East as the immediate source of fiction,” said Henry Herbert, when they were met once more, “you must still regard the Spanish Arabians as the great disseminators of those extravagant inventions which were so peculiar to their romantic and creative genius.”
“Less, perhaps, than many other sources. The absence of Moorish subjects from the earliest tales of chivalry, if it proves no more, at least shows how prevalent the tales of Charlemagne and his peers were in the eighth century, that a nation of conquerors could do little to infect them with legends of their own.”
“How and when, then, Lathom, would you introduce Eastern invention?” asked Thompson.
“I would refer it to much earlier ages, to the earliest of the Christian centuries, and contend that it was gradual, and therefore more natural; was the production of times and of ages, not the sudden birth and growth of one age; gradually augmenting until it attained to full and perfect stature.”
“Still,” rejoined Herbert, “we want the means by which this knowledge of Eastern fable was introduced.”
“Some share may be due to the return of those primitive Christians who sought refuge in the East from thepersecutions of the pagan rulers of the West. Their minds were well prepared to adopt the fervent expressions of the East, and their condition prevented them from investigating the tales they heard. Hence, in the lives of these saints they were as ready to interweave the prodigies of another land, hoping, perhaps, to conciliate the minds of the Eastern Oriental to the tenets of their faith, by introducing fictitious incidents of Oriental structure, as, to conciliate the heathen, they placed their gods and goddesses in the Christian temple, dignifying them with a new name, and serving them with novel ceremonies.”
“Admitting the probability, still your machinery seems deficient.”
“It is but a portion of my machinery. Much more was due to the clouds of monks, who, during the third and fourth centuries, wandered over the face of the habitable world.”
“When Gibbon admits that the progress of monachism was co-extensive with that of Christianity,” suggested Frederick Thompson.
“The disciples of Antony,” said Herbert, “we are assured, spread themselves beyond the tropic, over the Christian empire of Ethiopia.”
“Their distribution was universal,” said Lathom; “every province, almost every city of the empire, had its ascetics; they feared no dangers, and deemed no seas, mountains, or deserts a barrier to their progress.”
“The roving character of the monks, therefore,” says the last translator of the Gesta, “is another link of the chain by which I introduce Oriental fiction into the West; and it is utterly impossible (maturely weighing the habits and propensities of this class of people) that they should not have picked up and retained the floating traditions of the countries through which they passed. Some of the early romances, as well as the legends ofthe saints, were undoubtedly fabricated in the deep silence of the cloister. Both frequently sprung from the warmth of fancy which religious seclusion is so well tended to nourish; but the former were adorned with foreign embellishments.”
“Did it ever occur to you,” said Thompson, “that the story of Ulysses and Circe bears a wondrous likeness to that of Beder the prince of Persia and Giahame princess of Samandal, and that the voyages of Sindbad afford the counterpart of the Cyclops of the Odysee?”
“It would be but consistent with the reported travels of Homer, to allow an Eastern origin to a portion of his fable,” said Lathom.
“After your banished Christians and roving monks,” said Herbert, “you would admit the Spanish Arabians.”
“As one means, certainly,” replied Lathom; “and after them the Crusaders.”
“It were almost superfluous,” rejoined Herbert, “to allude to the Crusades as further sources of romantic and didactic fiction. No one will dispute their right to a place in the system. About the period of the third crusade this kind of writing was at its height.”
“Undoubtedly,” rejoined Lathom, “that age was the full tide of chivalry. Twenty years elapsed between that and the fourth and fifth expeditions into the east; and nearly a generation passed before, for the sixth and the last time, the wealth and blood of Europe was poured upon the plains of the East. Enough of money and life had been now spent to satisfy the most enthusiastic of the crusading body, and to check, if not to stem, the tide of popular feeling which had formerly run so strong in favor of the restoration of the sepulchre and the holy city to the guardianship of the faithful. Time was now at last beginning to allay the Anti-Saracenic passion. With the decline of these remarkable expeditions romantic fiction began to be regarded. For thoughoriginally extraneous and independent, romantic fictions had of late years become incorporated with chivalry and its institutions, and, with them, they naturally fell into decay.”
“Come, come, we must break off this discussion,” said Thompson, “or else we shall have no time to judge of Lathom’s performance this evening.”
“The story I selected to begin with is one replete with eccentricity, and peculiarly characteristic of this age; it is entitled