[467] _Barth. Antiq. Dan._ lib. i. cap. x. _Wormii Literatura Runica_, ad finem.
[468] See _Northern Antiquities, or a Description of the Manners,_ _Customs, &c., of the ancient Danes and other Northern Nations,_ _translated from the Fr. of M. Mallet_, 1770, 2 vols. 8vo. (vol. i. p. 49, &c.)
[470] Viz. _Astræa_, _Cassandra_, _Clelia_, &c.
[471] Mallet, vid. _Northern Antiquities_, vol. i. p. 318, &c.; vol. ii. p. 234, &c.
[472] _Letters concerning Chivalry_, 8vo. 1763.
[475] The seeds of chivalry sprung up so naturally out of the original manners and opinions of the northern nations, that it is not credible they arose so late as after the establishment of the Feudal System, much less the Crusades. Nor, again, that the romances of chivalry were transmitted to other nations, through the Spaniards, from the Moors and Arabians. Had this been the case the first French romances of chivalry would have been on Moorish, or at least Spanish subjects: whereas the most ancient stories of this kind, whether in prose or verse, whether in Italian, French, English, &c., are chiefly on the subjects of Charlemagne and the Paladins, or of our British Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, &c., being evidently borrowed from the fabulous chronicles of the supposed Archbishop Turpin and of Jeffery of Monmouth. Not but some of the oldest and most popular French romances are also on Norman subjects, as _Richard Sans-peur_, _Robert le Diable_, &c., whereas I do not recollect so much as one in which the scene is laid in Spain, much less among the Moors, or descriptive of Mahometan manners. Even in _Amadis de Gaul_, said to have been the first romance printed in Spain, the scene is laid in Gaul and Britain; and the manners are French: which plainly shews from what school this species of fabling was learnt and transmitted to the southern nations of Europe.
[476] Mallet. _North. Antiquities_, vol. i. p. 36; vol. ii. _passim_.
[477] _Olaus Verelius, Herv. Saga_, pp. 44, 45. Hickes's _Thesaur._ vol. ii. p. 311. _Northern Antiquities_, vol. ii. _passim_.
[478] _Ibid._ vol. i. pp. 69, 374, &c.; vol. ii. p. 216, &c.
[480] It is peculiarly unfortunate that such as maintain this opinion are obliged to take their first step from the Moorish provinces in Spain, without one intermediate resting place, to Armorica or Bretagne, the province in France from them most remote, not more in situation than in the manners, habits, and language of its Welsh inhabitants, which are allowed to have been derived from this island, as must have been their traditions, songs, and fables; being doubtless all of Celtic original. See p. 3 of the _Dissertation on the Origin of Romantic Fiction in Europe_, prefixed to Mr. Tho. Warton's _History of English Poetry_, vol. i. 1774, 4to. If any pen could have supported this darling hypothesis of Dr. Warburton that of this ingenious critic would have effected it. But under the general term Oriental, he seems to consider the ancient inhabitants of the north and the south of Asia, as having all the same manners, traditions, and fables; and because the secluded people of Arabia took the lead under the religion and empire of Mahomet, therefore everything must be derived from them to the Northern Asiatics in the remotest ages, &c. With as much reason under the word Occidental, we might represent the early traditions and fables of the north and south of Europe to have been the same; and that the Gothic mythology of Scandinavia, the Druidic or Celtic of Gaul and Britain, differed not from the classic of Greece and Rome.