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Whence, indeed, such persons as do not go in for professionally pleasing the divinity, who are neither priests, monks, nor nuns, need not stickle about it; and the secular literature of the Middle Ages, with its Launcelots, Tristrams, Flamencas, and all its German and Provençal lyrists, becomes the glorification of illicit love.

The Renaissance took up the old epic-romantic materials and made out of them works of art; but works of art which, as I said before, were playthings gets written for its delectation the comic-tragic novels of rapscallions, panders, prostitutes, and card-sharpers, which, from "Lazarillo de Tormes" to "Gil Bias," and from "Gil Bias" to "Tom Jones," finally replace the romances of the Launcelots, Galahads, Rinaldos, and Orlandos.

A modern Sir Launcelot, with the beauty of all the gods, the courage of a Coeur de Lion, the bow of a Chesterfield, and the purse of Fortunatus. That's the photo, isn't it?" "No, sir not a bit like it. The purse of a Fortunatus, if you like I ask nothing more. The Sir Launcelots of life, if they exist at all, are mostly poor men, and I don't want anything to do with poor men.

Countless multitudes of such men as Jamie must there be, to hold the fabric together and make possible the daring spins of you, my lords Lovelace, and you, Launcelots and Tristrams, and Miss Vivien here; who weave your paradoxical cross-purposes of tinsel evil in the sober woof of good. No one knew, or if he knew remembered, what was Jamie's age.

We are waiting for something actors walking up and down in the wings waiting for their cues to go on. This is intelligible. This magician of a street has created the illusion in our heads that there are adventure and romance around us. Fauns, Pierrots, Launcelots, Leanders we walk, expectantly waiting for our scenes to materialize.

These Arthurs, Launcelots, Tristrams, Kays, and Gawains, fantastic phantoms, were also far more artistically malleable than the iron Rolands, Olivers, and Renauds of earlier days; that unknown kingdom of Britain could much more easily be made the impossible ideal, in longing for which squeamish and lazy minds might refuse all coarser reality.

I trust that I may speak plainly on this delicate subject without offending the unco' guid or giving the priorient pulpiteers a pain. I believe the sexes should be equally pure when I make a world all my women shall be paragons of virtue, and all my men he-virgins. I'll construct no Messalinas nor Cleopatras, no Lovelaces or Sir Launcelots. I'll people the world with St.

First of all, let us look at the epic cycle, which, although known to us only in poems no older than those of the trouvères and minnesingers who sang of Charlemagne and Arthur, is in reality far more ancient, and on account of its antiquity and its consequent disconnection with mediæval religious and political interests, was thrown aside even by the nations to which it belonged, by the Scandinavians who took to writing sagas about the wars of Charlemagne against Saracens, and by the Germans who preferred to hear the adventures of Welsh and Briton, Launcelots and Tristrams.