Page:Stilfrid and Brunswik (1879).pdf/12

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INTRODUCTION.

nity, for life only, from the Emperor Henry IV. in return for his heroic services against the adherents of Pope Gregory VII.; and those of Duke Wladislaw II., who in 1158 received the crown for himself and his successors from the hands of the Emperor Frederic Barbarossa, in return for past services in Poland and in expectation of future services in Lombardy, where the subsequent achievements of the Bohemian forces were very remarkable. To Wladislaw was also granted, as an armorial bearing, the lion, which is still the national emblem of Bohemia. Some of the adventures will remind us of the German Siegfrid, and others of our old friend Sindbad, whose ‘roc’ reappears under a new name. Sir Percivale de Galis also in the ‘Morte d’Arthur’ (xiv. 6.) performs an exploit similar to that of Brunswik in assisting a lion to overcome a serpent.

It is hard to believe that these two romances can have proceeded from the same pen, so superior is that of Stilfrid to the other in style, dignity and morality. There is a noble disregard of geography in both, far out-heroding