rience, it had little to say. In the domain of religion
it knew only of Christian versus heathen, and its Chris-
tianity was nothing but varnish--a matter of going to
church, hearing mass, and swearing by Christ and the
saints.

To say that Arthurian romance offered something
in every way better would perhaps be saying too much;
but it offered, at any rate, something new and complex
and capable of endless variation. And notwithstanding
all its absurd unreality and its frequent lubricity, the
heart of it was sound and good. It enriched the lives
of those who read and pondered, turned their thoughts
to higher things, and fostered idealisms which were of
inestimable value to medi'val life. And to-day those
idealisms are the best part of our legacy from the Middle
Ages. The gentle knight, without fear and without
reproach, pricking o'er the plain or through haunted
woods at the will of his horse; free from all small anxieties
and sordid cares; always ready to do instant battle with
monsters dire or with human oppressors of Beauty;
always victorious, and finding his sufficient reward in
Beauty's favour--he never existed save in the dreams
of poets, but how immensely poorer we should be with-
out him!

The romances of chivalry came into Germany, as is
well known, by way of Northern France. The main body
of them is in a sense borrowed lore. Yet it is not literal
translation. The German romancers were not in the
least concerned to pose as original; they got their matter
from the French, and they said so, sometimes naming
the source or commenting on the merit of different
sources. The French provenience was felt by them to be
a recommendation of their work. Nevertheless, just in

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