that modern critical and analytical spirit which is so anxious to draw a clear and fast line between history and fiction, and which values literal accuracy more highly than the agreeable rounding of a narrative or the effective pointing of a moral. It was not the mediæval instinct to shut things off into compartments. They delighted in juxtapositions which seem to us more curious than admirable; they blended sacred and profane with a boldness which disconcerts both our piety and our worldliness. As regards history and fiction, their favourite intellectual dish was a sort of game-pie where all sorts of wild-fowl lay simmering in the same sauce under the same crust. Samson and the Argonauts, S. Michael and Alexander the Great, lions, bears, and unicorns, miracles and gross episodes, unseemly jests leading up to most edifying conclusions—such strangely-assorted elements jostle each other in the epic or romance, the gesta or the legenda, and had the advantage of gratifying at the same time a great variety of palates while seriously offending none. We must remember that the mediæval student could be the possessor of extremely few books. Chaucer's 'Clerke of Oxenford' was fortunate in owning so many as twenty. Each volume of such a library would naturally be prized by its possessor in proportion as it was a multum in parvo.
About the historical accuracy, therefore, so highly valued by the modern reader, his mediæval predecessor was usually but slightly concerned. To us it seems to make all the difference in the world whether a narrative (one, let us say, meant to point
