to whom he is assigned as champion in the adventure of the Lady of Sinadowne, objects only to his novelty of knighthood and is converted by his first victory.  The course of the adventures is, however, different from that which some people know from Malory, and many from Tennyson.  One of them is farcical:  the Fair Unknown rescues a damsel at her utmost need from two giants, a red and a black, one of whom is roasting a wild boar and uses the animal as a weapon, with the spit in it, for the combat.  Moreover, he falls a victim to the wiles of a sorceress-chatelaine whom he has also succoured:  and it is only after the year and day that Elene goads him on to his proper quest.  But this also is no bad story.

The limits of this volume admit of not much farther “argument” (though the writer would very gladly give it) of these minor romances of adventure, Arthurian and other.  Ellis’s easily accessible book supplies abstracts of the main Arthurian story before Malory; of the two most famous, though by no means best, of all the non-Arthurian romances, Guy of Warwick and Bevis of Hampton (the former of which was handled and rehandled from age to age, moralised, curtailed, lengthened, and hashed up in every form); of the brilliant and vigorous Richard Coeur-de-Lion; of the less racy Charlemagne romances in English; of the Seven Wise Masters, brought from the East and naturalised all over Europe; of the delightful love story of Florice and Blancheflour; of that powerful and pathetic legend of the Proud King (Robert of Sicily), which Longfellow and Mr. William Morris both modernised, each in his way; of those other legends, Sir Isumbras and Amis and Amillion, which are so beautiful to those who can appreciate the mediaeval mind, and to the beauty of which others seem insensible; of Sir Triamond and Sir Eglamour (examples of the romance at its weakest); of the exceedingly spirited and interesting Ipomydon, and of some others, including the best of Scotch romances, Sir Eger, Sir Grame, and Sir Graysteel.  But Ellis could not know others, and he left alone yet others that he might have known—­the exquisite Sir Launfal of Thomas Chester at the beginning of the fifteenth century, where an unworthy presentment of Guinevere is compensated by the gracious image of Launfal’s fairy love; the lively adventures of William of Palerne, who had a werewolf for his friend and an emperor’s daughter for his love, eloping with her in white bear-skins, the unusual meat of which was being cooked in her father’s kitchen; Sir Orfeo—­Orpheus and Eurydice, with a happy ending; Emare, one of the tales of innocent but persecuted heroines of which Chaucer’s Constance is the best known; Florence of Rome; the rather famous Squire of Low Degree; Sir Amadas, not a very good handling of a fine motive, charity to a corpse; many others.