But all the inventions and fashions of man have their date and their termination. For three centuries these ancient romances, metrical or prose, had formed the reading of the few who read, and entranced the circle of eager listeners. The enchantment was on the wane; their admirers had become somewhat sceptical of "the true history" which had been so solemnly warranted; another taste in the more chastened writings of Roman and Grecian lore was now on the ascendant. One last effort was made in this decline of romantic literature, in that tesselated compilement where the mottled pieces drawn out of the French prose romances of chivalry were finely squared together by no unskilful workman, in Sir THOMAS MALORY, to the English lover of ancient romance well known by the title of _La Morte d'Arthur_. This last of these ancient romances was finished in the ninth year of the reign of Edward IV., about 1470. CAXTON exulted to print this epical romance; and at the same time he had the satisfaction of reproaching the "laggard" age. "What do ye now," exclaimed the ancient printer, "but go to the _Bagnes_, and play at dice? Leave this! leave it! and read these noble volumes." Volumes which not many years after, when a new system of affairs had occurred to supplant this long-idolised "order of chivalry," ROGER ASCHAM plainly asserted only taught "open manslaughter and bold bawdry." Such was the final fate of Love and Arms! FOOTNOTES: [1] Warton and Percy, Ritson and Leyden, Ellis and Turner and Price, and recently the late Abbé de la Rue. [2] A profound and poetic genius has thrown out a new suggestion on the origin of these Eastern tales. "I think it not unlikely that the 'Milesian Tales' contained the germs of many of those _now in the_ 'Arabian Nights.' The Greek empire must have left deep impressions on the Persian intellect--so also many of the Roman Catholic _Legends_ are taken from _Apuleius_. The exquisite story of Cupid and Psyche is evidently a philosophical attempt to parry Christianity with a quasi Platonic account of the fall and redemption of man."--Coleridge's "Literary Remains," i. 180. Whatever were these "Milesian Tales," they amused the Grecian sages in the earliest period of their history. [3] Ritson and Weber have elegantly printed some of the best English metrical romances. In France they have recently enriched literature with many of these manuscript romances. See "Gentleman's Magazine," Oct. 1839. [4] It is a curious fact, that in 1390 Sir James Douglas, of Dalkeith, the ancestor of the Earl of Morton, apparently valued them as about equal to the statutes of the realm; for he bequeathed in his will to his son, "Omnes libros meos tam _Statutorum_ Regni Scocie quam _Romancie_."--Laing's "Early Metrical Tales," Edinburgh, 1826.