century. Mr. Utterson has suggested that the name rightly spelt would be D'Egaré, or L'Egaré, a person almost lost.*

The romance of King Alexander.

But throughout, the great romance of the romances that did not tell of Arthur or Charlemagne, was that of King Alexander. The Greek romance of Alexander, written about the year 1060 by Simeon Seth, keeper of the imperial wardrobe in the palace of Antiochus at Constantinople, and founded upon Oriental legends that abounded among the Persians and Arabians as Mirrors of Iskander, the "Two-Horned Alexander," &c., was translated into Latin, and from Latin even into Hebrew, by one who wrote under the adopted name of Jos. Gorionides, had very wide popularity, and became the groundwork of many French and English poems. Gerald de Barri mentions the Latin version which professed to be by an Æsopus or a Julius Valerius, and had a fictitious dedication to Constantine the Great. In the year 1200 Gaultier de Chatillon turned it into an Alexandreis, which was one of the best Latin poems of the Middle Ages; and, again, in 1236 Aretinus Qualichinus turned it into Latin elegiac verse.

Benoît de Sainte More, a trouvère who sang when Henry the Second reigned in England, produced a "Roman de Troie" in thirty thousand rhyming octosyllabic lines. While he took his incidents chiefly from Dictys and Dares, he interwove the story of Troilus and Cressida, borrowed from

and various readings from more recent copies, "as a contribution from the late William Henry Miller, of Craigetinny," with facsimile woodcuts from Mr. Miller's unique copy of Syr Degore, printed by Wynkyn de Worde.

* The story of Sir Degarré and the stories of many of the chief English romances of the Middle Ages may be found in Ellis's "Specimens of Early English Metrical Romances," of which an edition by Mr. Halliwell (London, 1848) forms one of the cheap volumes of Bohn's Antiquarian Library.

another source, if not invented. Alexandre Pey believed* that he was indebted to an earlier and larger book of Dares, "De Excidio Trojæ," than that which has come down to us. Benoît de St. More rhymed also an "Histoire des Ducs de Normandie" in twenty-three thousand lines, and he is credited with "Le Roman d'Eneas" of which there is a German version, "Diu Eneit," by the Minnesinger Heinrich von Veldecke, finished at Neuenberg on the Unstrut between the years 1184 and 1189.

A score of French poets worked upon the subject, and by translation and expansion produced that romance of Alexander of which the great French exemplar was composed in or near the year 1184† by the trouvère Lambert li Cort, or le Court, of Châteaudun, and Alexandre de Paris, named usually from Paris where he dwelt, and sometimes from Bernay where he was born. There are only fragments of the earliest French poem on this subject, written in the eleventh century in octosyllabic verse by Alberic of Besançon. The larger and later romance or Chanson d'Alixandre is of 22,606 lines in nine books, and the twelve syllabled lines are of the sort now called, as is generally supposed from their use in this poem, Alexandrines. All the lines of a paragraph, even though their number be a hundred, rhyme together. Chrestien de Troyes was among those who sang romances of Alexander the Great, and he made his Cliget Alexander's son. There is a German Alexandreis, written in six books, by Rudolph of Hohenems, a Suabian, between the years 1220 and 1254. Ulrich von Eschenbach translated the Alexandreis of Gaultier

*

p. 228.

Jahrbuch für Romanische und Englische Literatur, vol. i.,

+ A splendid illuminated copy of it is in the Bodleian Library. The English romance is in Henry Weber's "Metrical Romances of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Centuries." 3 vols. (Edinburgh, 1810).

de Chatillon. The Alexander romance was adopted in Spain, Italy, and even in Scandinavia. An admirable free translation into English metre was made in the thirteenth century by an unknown author, who has been called Adam Davie, because among other-chiefly religious and legendary -poems in the volume of Bodleian MS.* which contains it is a mystical poem, having no resemblance to it whatever, by an Adam Davie, the Marchal of Stratford atte Bow." But few mistakes can be more obvious than the assumption that all poems copied of old into one MS. book were the work of the same writer.

With an outline of this Early English version of the most widely famous of the independent metrical romances let us pass for the present from this form of literature. The texture of the story will show something of the influence exercised by Oriental fiction on the mind of Europe, but as in all our early metrical romances its point of view lies in the domain of medieval chivalry.

Our ancient romance of Kyng Alisaunder, written in rhymes short and irregular, consists of two parts. The first tells of the hero's youth and of his conquest of Darius; the second of his wonderful adventures in India; and it was the beginning of the interest taken by this country in India, when lords sat in hall and heard their minstrels sing of the "gentil baroun" who thus carried his conquests to the uttermost end of the earth. They had their own views of life and of geography. Their Alexander was a knight with horn and pennon, and his battles were fierce medley encounters of men in full armour fighting hand to hand. They liked to have the detail of all battles in a tale, and the description was but the recital of a series of duels. As for their geography, therewith begins the romance of

*Laud i. 74.

There is a second MS. in the Library of Lincoln's

Inn, No. 150.

Kyng Alisaunder.

Learned clerks divide into three parts (Europe, Africa, and Asia) this middle earth, but Asia is as big as the other two. Wise men discover twelve months in the year, February the twelfth and no more; they know the names of planets; some are hot and some are cold; all tell the chances of this life; and once there were good barons who understood this art, of which there was none wiser than Neptanabus, King of Egypt. When the kings prepared battle against him he looked in the sky. He made puppets of wax and caused them to fight together, so he quelled his enemy with charms and conjurations. At last King Philip of Macedon, with twenty-nine kings in his train, marched against Neptanabus, who saw in the stars death for himself should he abide in Egypt. Therefore he fled disguised to the rich city of Macedon itself, while Philip was distressing Egypt.

Now Philip's queen, Olympias, the fairest woman living, was disposed to show her charms in a procession, and to make a feast. There were knights tourneying, and maidens carolling, and champions skirmishing and wrestling, lions hunted, bears baited, boars at bay; the city was hung with furs and cloth of gold, and Dame Olympias rode through all the town, with a crown on her head and with her mantle off. Her yellow hair, plaited with rich strings of gold-wire, fell to her waist. Neptanabus stood in the road. Bareheaded he gazed at her, she also gazed at him. They exchanged a word, and he hurriedly left her. When she returned to the palace she sent her under-chamberlain after him, and heard from him of his magic power. He used his art in her presence to confirm the saying of the wise that Philip on his return would put her away for a new wife, but he foretold also that Ammon, god of Libya, would come down to her from the sky, and that she should be mother of one son, the god of Land, who would avenge her of all foes.

Then Neptanabus went home to his inn, and there made a puppet of wax, with which he charmed the queen. He gave her dreams. As a false god in the form of a dragon he went to her. He was the father of King Alexander. He caused also King Philip to have portentous dreams, and when, after the king's return, he would disgrace Olympias at a great feast, Neptanabus descended from the air in form of a great dragon that caressed her, and there appeared divers strange portents. Afterwards, when Alexander was born, the earth shook, the sea became green, the sun ceased to shine, the moon appeared and became black the thunder crashed. King Philip said to the mother, "You have borne a sorry son."

T-VOL. III.

"Gef he libbe ryde and go

Mony a mon he schal do wo."

The boy grew and had a dozen masters; Aristotle was one of them. One day, when King Philip sported in a plain, a grisly colt was brought him, chained, by men who had found it in the wood. It had a hart's crupper, a bull's head, a sharp horn in the midst of the forehead. It was fed with red wheat, and liked man's flesh better than It was kept bound in iron chains, and was fed with condemned thieves. It would eat a man sooner than two champions could eat a hen. Bulsifal it was called, and only Alexander dared bestride it. For him it would lie down, and he might play upon its back.

any corn.

One day Neptanabus sported with Alexander, and was teaching him the secrets of the stars. Alexander tripped him quietly into a pit, his head cracked against a stone, his neck-bone brake in two. "What treason is this," he cried, "against thy father?" "What!" Alexander said, "hast thou begot me? Could you not see in your books whose hand would slay you? Thou shalt beguile no other men ; now I am quits with thee." "I knew," he said, "that I should be slain by my son.' "Art thou my father?" quoth Alexander. "Yes," he said, 66 rumour speaks true." Then Alexander drew him from the pit, and took him to Olympias. But soon he made another pit and put Neptanabus in his long house. So came to that man of evil life an evil end.

The king desired to know which of his sons-Philip or Alexander -should be his successor. The oracle declared for him who should tame Bulsifal, and that was Alexander. He was knighted therefore, and a hundred knights were dubbed together with him. His father had been aggrieved by the King Nicholas of Carthage; Alexander therefore crossed the sea with knights, elephants, and camels, and encamped his knights in their pavilions on the sward of the strange land. Walking alone presently upon the shore he met Nicholas, an hardy man, stout and savage, who said anon, "Who gave thee leave hither to come? Quick! Get thee hence soon! Thou hast nothing to do here!" They quarrelled until Nicholas insulted Alexander grossly

"Fy on the!' quoth Nycolas,

And spitte amydde his face "

then ran away to escape chastisement. That was but delayed to the day following, when Alexander killed him in a great battle and sacked his city.