the reception of imagery of this cast by the wild, sublime, and even chivalric fictions of the Gothic nations, whose system of mythology, and enthusiastic love of poetry and enterprise, most undoubtedly laid the prima stamina of both ro, mance and chivalry. In fact, at the period we are now arrived at, the poetry and the fables of the Scalds, the ancient title of the bards of Scandinavia, became first tinged with the luxuriant and beautiful fancy of Arabia and Persia, and continuing for some centuries to imbibe still greater portions of this rich and exquisite colouring, not only the imagery and the literature of the East became familiar, through the medium of translation, but an immense multitude of original pieces, in the form of prose or metrical tales, were composed; and which, in the hands of the Trouveurs of northern France, vied, in variety of incident and splendour of imagination, with the most celebrated narratives of Eastern fancy.

In the year 1147 the second, Crusade was undertaken by the emperor Conrad the third, and Louis the seventh, king of France. "The armies of the second crusade," says Gibbon, "might have claimed the conquest of Asia: the nobles of France and Germany were animated by the presence of their sovereigns; and both the rank and personal characters of Conrad and Louis,

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gave a dignity to their cause, and a discipline to their force, which might be vainly expected from the feudatory chiefs. The cavalry of the emperor, and that of the king, was each composed of seventy thousand knights, and their immediate attendants in the field; and, if the light-armed troops, the peasant infantry, the women and children, the priests and monks, be rigorously excluded, the full account will scarcely be satisfied with four hundred thousand souls. The West, from Rome to Britain, was called into action; the kings of Poland and Bohemia obeyed the summons of Conrad; and it is affirmed by the Greeks and Latins, that, in the passage of a straight or river, the Byzantine agents, after a tale of nine hundred thousand, desisted from the endless and formidable computation *."

The second passage of such a prodigious multitude of warriors and pilgrims through the Greek empire and the most civilized parts of the East, where art, science, and literature, elegance, luxury, and cultivated manners must have been obtruded upon them at every step, must necessarily have softened the ferocity and barbarism of the western chiefs, and excited some degree of curiosity and emulation. The Greek emperor, Manuel Comnenus, and his whole family, were not only en

* Gibbon's Roman Empire, vol. xi. p. 106, 107.

couragers of learning, but learned themselves; Constantinople abounded in the most consummate works of art; and while the caliphs cherished literature with the fondest enthusiasm, the cities of Damascus and Bagdad furnished the most splendid specimens of oriental fancy and magnificence.

That an eager curiosity to visit the wonders of the East, independent of religious or military enthusiasm, was awakened by this second invasion, owing to the adventures and descriptions of its surviving heroes, may be inferred from the circumstance that in the interval between this and the third crusade, we may date the era of travelling into the East for the mere purposes of information and improvement. About the year 1160, Benjamin of Tudela in Navarre, a Jew physician, visited Constantinople, Judea, and Syria, with these laudable views, and may be esteemed, observes a learned author, "one of the first European travellers, who penetrated without a sword in his hand into the East."

There can be little doubt that the example had its due influence and effect, and that much accession to a knowledge of the East, its manners, customs, and literature, was the result of this and subsequent attempts. Much also was perpetually accruing to the stock of information from the ra

pidly repeated aggression which the religious madness of Europe so eagerly prompted. The year 1188 ushered in a third crusade, in which the emperor Frederic Barbarossa, and the kings of France and England were engaged; the former pursuing the usual route by land, while Louis and Richard, with much less risque of danger and discomfiture, chose to navigate the Mediterranean.

The wonders of this expedition, the heroism and prowess of Richard, surnamed Coeur de Lion, have been the exhaustless theme of the minstrel, and have invested the gallant monarch of England with all the romantic glories of Arthur, or of Charlemagne. "It is obvious," says an able author, "how much the genius of romance must have been assisted by the Crusades, and what a fund of new and inexhaustible materials would be furnished to fancy and ingenuity, by a new country, new heroes, and new machinery. That indefinite desire of hearing and relating wonders, directed by the predominance of chivalry to particular objects, had now its fullest gratification. The author might not only quit the narrow regions of truth, but was barely expected to keep within the wide range of probability; and the reader, by an accommodating sympathy, might follow him in his flight, without being disgusted

with his extravagancies. A distant scene, like a distant period, gives the writer an arbitrary power of supposing almost all that he pleases; and we admit without reluctance, what we cannot contradict without difficulty. Romance was soon advanced. Arthur, and the knights of his round table; Charlemagne, with Roland and his compeers, saw their circle enlarged by additional heroes, by Godfrey and Tancred, Richard and Saladin. The machinery of the piece received the most striking embellishments from the introduction of oriental inventions. The horn of Roland was eclipsed by greater wonders, the speed of a horse outstripped by the flight of a dragon and a griffin; and Merlin himself with all his charms can be considered only as qualified for the humble agent of an Asiatic enchanter *.”

In the period which elapsed between the commencement of the first crusade at the close of the eleventh century, and the termination of the third towards the end of the twelfth (a period of nearly one hundred years) a vast variety of tales and fables, many of which were oriental, had obtained a rapid circulation. Piers Alfonse, whom we have already mentioned as the translator of what are called Pilpay's fables, compiled early in the twelfth

* Introduction to the Literary History of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, p. 170.