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The condition, quoth Panurge, is very hard. Nevertheless, cost what price it will, or whatsoever come of it, I heartily condescend thereto; protesting that I shall to-morrow break my fast betimes after my somniatory exercitations. Furthermore, I recommend myself to Homer's two gates, to Morpheus, to Iselon, to Phantasus, and unto Phobetor.
If all that I regarded as essentially German had hitherto drawn me with ever-increasing force, and compelled me to its eager pursuit, I here found it suddenly presented to me in the simple outlines of a legend, based upon the old and well-known ballad of 'Tannhauser. True, its elements were already familiar to me from Tieck's version in his Phantasus.
Sit you down under the green thyme, and pay attention; and when Phantasus comes, I shall find an opportunity to pinch his wings, and to pull out a little feather. Take the pen no better is given to any poet and it will be enough for you! "And when Phantasus came the feather was plucked, and I seized it," said the little Mouse. "I put it in water, and held it there till it grew soft.
All that is very pleasing to Phantasus; but it is not enough for him: I myself must talk to him, and tell him of life in the woods, and must revert to my childhood, when I was little, and the tree such a delicate thing that a stinging-nettle overshadowed it and I have to tell everything, till now that the tree is great and strong.
The time and circumstances, but more particularly the bad reputation of the chamber, set his blood in quicker motion; and all the old ghost-stories presented themselves unbidden before his excited imagination. Phantasus and Morpheus contended for possession of him: the first had the advantage.
About his head shall be seen Morpheus, Icelus, and Phantasus, and a great number of Dreams, all which are his children. The Dreams shall be little figures, some of a beautiful aspect and others hideous, as being things that partly please and partly terrify.
She told me that Phantasus, the genius of imagination, was her very good friend, that he was beautiful as the god of love, and that he rested many an hour under the leafy boughs of the tree, which then rustled more strongly than ever over the pair of them.
Tieck gave a version of it in his "Phantasus." As we are on the very scene of this graceful little tale, I must give the essence of it. The romance, which dates from the second half of the thirteenth century, is in prose, mingled with scraps of rhyme, destined to be sung, and with their musical notation given.
But even had Chaucer owed the idea of his plan to Boccaccio, he would not thereby have incurred a heavy debt to the Italian novelist. There is nothing really dramatic in the schemes of the "Decamerone" or of the numerous imitations which it called forth, from the French "Heptameron" and the Neapolitan "Pentamerone" down to the German "Phantasus."
Phantasus, they have it, transforms himself into various inanimate things, and him, also, we may represent, after the words of Ovid, partly of stone, partly of water, and partly of wood.
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