magne, Frankish king of a new Rome, was celebrated with
his paladins in stories of patriotic pride and national aspira-
tion. Meantime the Germanic heroes of elder days had
been sung in Germanic epics. Like the epics of Greece,
these preserve an elder mythology; for the Germanic tales
of the Nibelungs and Vӧlsungs are quite as near as the Iliad
and Odyssey to folklore, hero-worship, and nature-worship.
They show how largely the strong new peoples had repeated
the race experiences of the elder peoples. Many even of
the later medieval stories are in much the same sense legend-
ary; they are full of folklore, childlike wonder, and a cer-
tain youthful zest for adventure. The Celtic stories of
Arthur grew into a great cycle as they spread over Britain
and France into Italy and Spain. These Germanic and
these Celtic stories, different enough in some ways, are
alike in springing from hero-legends, and show alike how
largely medieval literature is a literature of stories.

When we analyze medieval stories for their literary habit
and character, we find a certain broad difference between
those of the earlier and those of the later middle age.
New habits of story-telling emerge into distinctness in the
twelfth century. Though the history of literature is contin-
uous, the old shading into the new, gradual changes are
pushed on by fresh impulses and stronger talents into new
habits and new literary forms. Thus the general character-
istics of earlier medieval literature may be summed up in
the word epic; the general characterictics of later medieval
literature, in the word romance, and the imaginary line
between them may be drawn about 1100. Not only is there
no definite chronological separation, but even the approxi-
mate date varies from nation to nation. The Norse, for
instance, in the seclusion of Iceland kept an epic literary
habit in their sagas long after the habit of other peopleshad

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