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were ready to be amused, and that there was nothing so amusing as a story. In the twelfth century, before St. Thomas à Becket gave up his life in Canterbury cloisters, English knights and ladies had grown familiar with the tragic history of King Lear, the exploits of Jack the Giant Killer, the story of King Arthur and of the enchanter Merlin. The earliest of these tales came from Brittany, and were translated from Armorican into Latin by Geoffrey of Monmouth, a Benedictine monk, and a benefactor to the world; but, by the following century, Robin Hood, Tom-a-Lincoln, and a host of sturdy English-born heroes shared in the popular attention. It must have been inexpressibly helpful to the writers and compilers of early fiction that the uncritical age in which they lived had not yet been vitiated by the principles of realistic art. The modern maxims about sinning against the probabilities, and the novelist's bondage to truth, had not then been invented; and the man who told a story was free to tell it as he pleased. His readers or his hearers were seldom disposed to question his assertions. A knight did not go to the great and unnecessary