TO MRS. JOSEPH COOLIDGE. DEAR MADAM: To you, who have sympathized in my tastes, and encouraged my researches, I dedicate this attempt to depict the age of chivalry, and to revive the legends of the land of our fathers. Your friend and cousin, T. B. PREFACE. In a former work the compiler of this volume endeavored to impart the pleasures of classical learning to the English reader, by presenting the stories of Pagan mythology in a form adapted to modern taste. In the present volume the attempt has been made to treat in the same way the stories of the second "age of fable," the age which witnessed the dawn of the several states of Modern Europe. It is believed that this presentation of a literature which held unrivalled sway over the imaginations of our ancestors, for many centuries, will not be without benefit to the reader, in addition to the amusement it may afford. The tales, though not to be trusted for their facts, are worthy of all credit as pictures of manners; and it is beginning to be held that the manners and modes of thinking of an age are a more important part of its history than the conflicts of its peoples, generally leading to no result. Besides this, the literature of romance is a treasure-house of poetical material, to which modern poets frequently resort. The Italian poets, Dante and Ariosto, the English, Spenser, Scott, and Tennyson, and our own Longfellow and Lowell, are examples of this. These legends are so connected with each other, so consistently adapted to a group of characters strongly individualized in Arthur, Launcelot, and their compeers, and so lighted up by the fires of imagination and invention, that they seem as well adapted to the poet's purpose as the legends of the Greek and Roman mythology. And if every well-educated young person is expected to know the story of the Golden Fleece, why is the quest of the Sangreal less worthy of his acquaintance? Or if an allusion. to the shield of Achilles ought not to pass unapprehended, why should one to Escalibar, the famous sword of Arthur; "Of Arthur, who, to upper light restored, Which yet he brandishes for future war, Shall lift his country's fame above the polar star"? * It is an additional recommendation of our subject, that it tends to cherish in our minds the idea of the source from which we sprung. We are entitled to our full share in the glories and recollections of the land of our forefathers, down to the time of colonization thence. The associations which spring from this source must be fruitful of good influences; among which not the least valuable is the increased enjoyment which such associations afford to the American traveller when he visits England, and sets his foot upon any of her renowned localities. The readers of Tennyson are invited to peruse in these legends the originals of those stories which the poet has clothed in the drapery of verse, and given to the public in his "Idylls of the King," and in shorter poems. Perhaps some of them may be found more intelligible for our plain narrative of the same events. *Wordsworth. |