Taylor, Edgar [Hrsg.]; Austin, Sarah [Hrsg.]: Lays of the minnesingers or German troubadours of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries: Illustr. by specimens of the contemporary lyric poetry of Provence and other parts of Europe ; With histor. and crit. notes, and engravings from the ms. of the minnesingers in the king's library at Paris, and from other sources (London, 1825)

36 CASTILLE.

content when we discover causes adequate to the pro-
duction of the existing phenomenon ;—

" Ye gods, annihilate both space and time "
seems to be no extravagant wish for one who desires
to make a theory hold water. Thus Warton embarks
his cargo of fiction consigned to the ports of Toulon
and Marseilles, conveys it on by land-carriage to
Brittany, and leaves it, under the impetus he has
given it, to find its way thence into the mountains of
Wales, or the court of Strathclyde ;—and all this to
escape the shorter process of allowing to native bards
the exercise of their own fancies, which were, to all
appearance, as competent to create, as those of the
supposed exporters of surplus produce in Spain. So,
too, the editor of Antar sees the heroes of the round-
table in the Bedouin rover, and tells us " that little
more was wanted to compose the romances of the
middle ages, than to engraft on the war, love, and
courtesy of the Arabs, the splendid and soft luxuries
of the other countries of the East, the witchcraft of
Africa, the religious fervour of the South of Europe,
and the gloomy superstitions of the North." A cu-
rious meeting this on the plains of Brittany.

Massieu imports the Arabic poetry with Warton's
fiction, by sea at Toulon and Marseilles : for he tells
us that by the convenience of these ports it passed
with the commerce between Spain and France. Fa-
ther Andrez is less prudent, in so far as he is more