A delightful old book called The Voyages and Travels of Sir John Mandeville  was a great favorite. It describes the way to Jerusalem and purports to have been written as a guidebook for those who wished to make the pilgrimage. When people read it, they felt, as in watching the mystery plays, that they were gaining something religiously and also having an exceedingly good time. "Sir John" sees as many marvels as Sindbad the sailor. By the Dead Sea he finds apples that are fair to look upon, but within are nothing but ashes and cinders. He gazes at people with ears that hang down to their knees, upon hens that bear wool, upon pigmies, giants, and griffins. He closes his book with the request that all its readers will pray for him as he will pray for them; and surely a man who has written so entertainingly has a right to ask the favor of those who enjoy his book.

The crusades gave rise of course to tales and romances without number. In one some returning crusaders brought with them an image of the Virgin Mary. Suddenly it became so heavy that they could not carry it. Therefore they stopped and built a church for it on the spot. Another story, coming from Burgundy, said that a long-bearded crusader, sick and travel-worn, appeared at his old home in the garb of a pilgrim. The house was full of rejoicing, for its mistress, who had waited many weary years in the hope that her husband would return, was now about to marry a second time. She had always kept half of a gold ring that she and her husband had divided; and now he produced the other half. There was no second marriage, and the wife and her long lost husband lived together again in great happiness. But it seemed that the crusader had been taken captive by the Saracens and had only been allowed to go home on condition of returning to captivity if he could not find money for his ransom. The money could not be raised. He said a sorrowful farewell to his wife and went back to Saladin. When the generous Saracen heard the story, he bade that the honest man be set free. "But name your oldest son for me," he said, "and let your coat of arms be bells and crescents."

The writings of the Middle Ages may be divided into two classes; those written in Latin, which are generally dull and uninteresting, and those written in the languages of the different peoples, which are generally bright and entertaining. In most of the countries that had been ruled by the Romans, especially Italy, France, and Spain, the people spoke what are called the Romance These were more or less like that of the Romans, but far simpler; for instance, the Latin word for mother, mater, became in French mère; and instead of saying matris  for of the mother  and matri  for to the mother, people used prepositions and said de la mère  and à la mère. It was much easier to remember a few prepositions than to learn how to decline every noun. Verbs and other parts of speech were gradually simplified in somewhat the same fashion; and by the eleventh century there were languages which were far more manageable for light poems and stories than the more dignified Latin. The use of rhyme and accent in poetry had come in. No one knows just how this came about; but it is certain that the taste of people had gradually changed, and now, instead of liking the Latin fashion of "quantity," that is, of giving to each syllable a fixed length of time, either long or short, they preferred to accent certain syllables of a line and end it with the words or syllables that rhymed. Then it was that the troubadours of southern France and, a little later, the trouveurs, or trouvères, of northern France, began to compose their songs. The troubadours used the form of Old French that was called the langue d'oc, because in southern France "yes" was "oc." In northern France "yes" was "œil," and therefore the northern tongue was called the langue d'œil.

The troubadours composed chiefly love songs and battle songs. Everybody seemed to love poetry, and any wanderer was welcome at the most lordly castle if he could only compose verses and sing them to the music of the harp. A knight would have thought it far beneath him to joust with a common man; but to sing songs together was quite a different matter, and the proudest noble would not have found it any disgrace to mingle his voice with that of a beggar. After a tournament was over and the prizes had been distributed, the lady of the castle often opened what was called a Court of Love. Here knights and even sovereigns vied with one another in singing extempore verses. Richard the Lionhearted was as proud of his skill as a troubadour as of his prowess in battle. At the close of the Court of Love, the ladies discussed at length the merits of the different singers, and gave to the most deserving prizes which were as much valued as those of the tournament.

Some of our best accounts of tournaments, as, indeed, of battles and many other things, came from the pen of Froissart, a French clergyman who wrote at the end of the fourteenth century. A nobleman employed him to write a history of the wars of the time; and Froissart mounted his horse and ambled along from one place to another, wherever a battle had been fought or any other event of special interest had come to pass. He talked to people and gathered all the information that he could and then wrote it in his Chronicles. He does not care what caused the war or who wins, and he is just as jubilant over an English victory as a French; the one thing that he wants to do is to get hold of a good story and tell it. It is he who paints such a picture of the Black Prince humbly serving the French king, who has been taken prisoner at the battle of Poitiers; and it is he who describes so vividly the coming of the six wealthy citizens of conquered Calais to Edward III, in their shirts, barefooted, and with ropes about their necks, that by their death the anger of the king might be appeased and their fellow citizens forgiven. Just at the moment when the reader despairs of their being saved, Froissart brings in Queen Philippa with so earnest a plea for mercy that the king cannot refuse to pardon them. Indeed, whenever one discovers a particularly lively account of any event that came within the ken of Froissart, it is almost sure to have been written by his pen. It is no wonder that, as he roamed about from castle to castle, telling his tales wherever he went, he always found a welcome.

About a century later than the time when the troubadours began to flourish in southern France, the in northern France were singing in the langue d'œil, and were great favorites at the courts of the dukes of Normandy. The Normans were descendants of the fierce vikings of an earlier day who had settled in France. They had lost none of their boldness and daring, but they had adopted French customs and the French language. From these trouvères came gay little tales of love and adventure called fabliaux, many of the mystery plays that have already been mentioned, and brilliant romances of chivalry. The craze for these romances and for even the feebler imitations of them that were composed somewhat later was so intense and lasted so long that at the beginning of the seventeenth century Cervantes of Spain wrote his famous Don Quixote  as a parody on them. The good old Don is described as having read so many of these productions that his brain is touched, and with a helmet of pasteboard, an ancient suit of rusty armor, a farm horse for a steed of war, and a country laborer for a squire, he set out in search of adventures. He found them in plenty. To his disordered mind some windmills on a plain seemed to be evil giants. One can guess the result of his valiant attack upon them. A flock of sheep moving toward him he is convinced is an immense army of knights, and he charges on them most valiantly. It is no wonder that this book put an end to the composing of romances and the fashion of reading them.

In Germany, too, between the twelfth century and the fourteenth, there were many poets. Some sang of Arthur and the Holy Grail and Charlemagne and the Nibelungs; but far more tenderly and elegantly and with much better taste than the poets of the langue d'oc or those of the langue d'œil. Some of the German poets called minnesingers, or love-singers, and their poems are really dainty and graceful and far more refined in feeling and expression than the rather coarse songs of the Courts of Love. Knights, priests, wandering students, kings, and simple country folk met together in the joy of poetry and music, and sang of love and sorrow and the beauties of spring with a pureness and freshness that hold their charm even to this day.

The names of two great authors shine out from the Middle Ages, the Italian Dante and the English Dante wrote about 1300 his famous Divine Comedy. In this poem he passes through the gates of hell under the guidance of Virgil. He visits one "circle" after another, each occupied by some one class of criminals, and sees the terrible punishments inflicted upon them. He then enters purgatory; and here sinners are expiating the wrongs that they have committed. Those who have been greedy suffer constantly from hunger and thirst. Those who held their heads too high in their pride are dragged down by heavy weights. Those who were lazy are now forced to run about continually. Each penance is adapted to the fault. On top of the mountain of purgatory is the maiden Beatrice whom Dante had loved even as a child and had lost by her early death. She now becomes his guide and leads him through the nine heavens, where he meets the great and good of all ages and finally is permitted a vision of God and his angels. The poem is great because its language is so rich and beautiful, because its characters are alive and its pictures so vivid that an artist could work from them, and, most of all, because it is so complete in its plan and in every detail as to show a marvelous imagination.

It is said that the good folk of Florence used to point at Dante as he went along the street and whisper half fearfully, "That's the man who has been in hell"; but I fancy that people said of Chaucer, "That's the man who sees everything and enjoys whatever he sees," for he seems to take such genuine pleasure in every common sight and in studying every person. In his Canterbury Tales, wherein a large company of all sorts of people go on pilgrimage to the shrine of Thomas à Becket at Canterbury, he is apparently as much interested in one as in another, but he treats each one in different fashion. He looks with respect upon the "verray parfit gentil knyght," and he has a kindly word for the gay young squire who is singing or whistling from morning to night. He makes us see the coy and dainty ways of the nun, and he really cannot help making a sly jest at her French, which was not that of Paris, but

a town in England. He is a bit indignant at the friar, who "knew the tavernes well in every town," and is better acquainted with innkeepers and barmaids than with lepers and beggars; but he has a warm sympathy with the poor clerk who would rather have books than gorgeous robes; and he speaks most reverently of the good parish priest who loved to give to the poor and who never scorned even a sinful man. In the poem these good folk tell stories, stories of chivalry, of the crafty fox who stole Chanticleer, of magic swords, of fairies and giants and enchanted steeds; and in each the author is at home and enjoying himself. He drops in so many little confidential speeches to the reader that one feels as if the poet were right at his elbow instead of being five centuries away.

These are snatches of the writings that come to mind first when one thinks of the days of knighthood. Leaving out the two great names of Dante and Chaucer, there is little that has any great excellence; but it is entertaining and rich in promise, and the promise has been nobly fulfilled.