ABSTRACT
The Legendary Art of the Middle Ages sprang out of the legendary literature of the preceding ages. The romances of Chivalry, which long afterwards succeeded, were confined to particular classes, and left no impress on Art, beyond the miniature illuminations of a few manuscripts. The mind began, therefore, to seek out, or eagerly to seize, some other more material beings in closer alliance with human sympathies.’ The wildest of them had some basis of truth to rest on, and the forms which they gradually assumed were but the necessary result of the age which produced them. They became the intense expression of that inner life, which revolted against the desolation and emptiness of the outward existence; of those crushed and outraged sympathies which cried aloud for rest, and refuge, and solace, and could nowhere find them. The mind began, therefore, to seek out, or eagerly to seize, some other more material beings in closer alliance with human sympathies.’.
