The true romantic interest is very unequally distributed over the works of the Middle Ages, and there is least of it in the authors who are most representative of the "age of chivalry." There is a disappointment prepared for any one who looks in the greater romantic authors of the twelfth century for the music of the _Faery Queene_ or _La Belle Dame sans Merci_. There is more of the pure romantic element in the poems of Brynhild, in the story of Njal, in the _Song of Roland_, than in the famous romances of Chrestien of Troyes or any of his imitators, though they have all the wonders of the Isle of Britain at their command, though they have the very story of Tristram and the very mystery of the Grail to quicken them and call them out. Elegance, fluency, sentiment, romantic adventures are common, but for words like those of Hervor at the grave of her father, or of the parting between Brynhild and Sigurd, or of Helgi and Sigrun, it would be vain to search in the romances of Benoit de Sainte More or of Chrestien. Yet these are the masters of the art of romance when it was fresh and strong, a victorious fashion. If the search be continued further, the search for that kind of imaginative beauty which these authors do not give, it will not be unsuccessful. The greater authors of the twelfth century have more affinity to the "heroic romance" of the school of the _Grand Cyrus_ than to the dreams of Spenser or Coleridge. But, while this is the case with the most distinguished members of the romantic school, it is not so with all the rest. The magic that is wanting to the clear and elegant narrative of Benoit and Chrestien will be found elsewhere; it will be found in one form in the mystical prose of the _Queste del St. Graal_--a very different thing from Chrestien's _Perceval_--it will be found, again and again, in the prose of Sir Thomas Malory; it will be found in many ballads and ballad burdens, in _William and Margaret_, in _Binnorie_, in the _Wife of Usher's Well_, in the _Rime of the Count Arnaldos_, in the _Königskinder_; it will be found in the most beautiful story of the Middle Ages, _Aucassin and Nicolette_; one of the few perfectly beautiful stories in the world, about which there is no need, in England at any rate, to say anything in addition to the well-known passages in which it has been praised. _Aucassin and Nicolette_ cannot be made into a representative medieval romance: there is nothing else like it; and the qualities that make it what it is are the opposite of the rhetorical self-possession, the correct and deliberate narrative of Chrestien and his school. It contains the quintessence of romantic imagination, but it is quite unlike the most fashionable and successful romances.