The translation of Montalvo does not seem to have been very literal. It was, as he intimates, much better than the Portuguese in its style and phraseology; and the last part especially appears to have been more altered than either of the others.[371] But the structure and tone of the whole fiction are original, and much more free than those of the French romances that had preceded it. The story of Arthur and the Holy Cup is essentially religious; the story of Charlemagne is essentially military; and both are involved in a series of adventures previously ascribed to their respective heroes by chronicles and traditions, which, whether true or false, were so far recognized as to prescribe limits to the invention of all who subsequently adopted them. But the Amadis is of imagination all compact. No period of time is assigned to its events, except that they begin to occur soon after the very commencement of the Christian era; and its geography is generally as unsettled and uncertain as the age when its hero lived. It has no purpose, indeed, but to set forth the character of a perfect knight, and to illustrate the virtues of courage and chastity as the only proper foundations of such a character. [371] Don Quixote, ed. Clemencin, Tom. I. p. 107, note. Amadis, in fulfilment of this idea, is the son of a merely imaginary king of the imaginary kingdom of Gaula. His birth is illegitimate, and his mother, Elisena, a British princess, ashamed of her child, exposes him on the sea, where he is found by a Scottish knight, and carried, first to England, and afterwards to Scotland. In Scotland he falls in love with Oriana, the true and peerless lady, daughter of an imaginary Lisuarte, King of England. Meantime, Perion, King of Gaula, which has sometimes been conjectured to be a part of Wales, has married the mother of Amadis, who has by him a second son, named Galaor. The adventures of these two knights, partly in England, France, Germany, and Turkey, and partly in unknown regions and amidst enchantments,--sometimes under the favor of their ladies, and sometimes, as in the hermitage of the Firm Island, under their frowns,--fill up the book, which, after the broad journeyings of the principal knights, and an incredible number of combats between them and other knights, magicians, and giants, ends, at last, in the marriage of Amadis and Oriana, and the overthrow of all the enchantments that had so long opposed their love.