torians were accustomed to declare themselves, not at all
inventors of new matter--far from it--but faithful trans-
mitters of the old. The literary habit of the age was, not
invention, but transmission.

But this wide transmission of romances differed, of course,
with different romancers. Some were little more than para-
phrasers or translators. They varied from the form of
their originals as much by blunder as by design. Being thus
mechanical, their work has no literary value, though it
often serves to show how popular a story was by preserving
it in many manuscripts. Other romancers expanded or
intensified an old story by borrowing from another story,
or combined two different versions, subordinating some inci-
dents and filling out others. These romancers, that is, under-
took, not merely transmission, but also composition. They
did not invent new material, but they did modify the old
form; and, according to their success in shaping, they have
literary merit. And finally, a few romancers treated their
material as ore to be melted in their imaginations and recast
in new form. Looking in an old story for some main interest
and significance, and disregarding, when they chose, the
order of incidents in their sources, they selected and com-
bined freely in order to gain their desired effects. Not yet
as Chaucer reshaped the old story of Troilus and Cressida,
or Shakespeare reshaped the old story of Cæsar, but never-
theless originally, they told an old tale in a new way. Though
they rarely added new incidents of their own invention, they
achieved an original and literary whole. They were original,
not as inventors, but as shapers. They studied how to
please their readers by methods calculated to produce
surprise or suspense or satisfaction in the outcome. They
planned their stories to awaken, and then increase, and then
satisfy a reader's sympathy. By applying to romance definite

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