But fiction, no more than drama, could do without the [Greek: amarthia]--the human and not unpardonable frailty.

This appears in, and complicates, the famous story of _Tristram_, which, though its present English form is probably younger than _Havelok_ and _Horn_, is likely to have existed earlier: indeed must have done so if Thomas of Erceldoune wrote on the subject.

Few can require to be told that beautiful and tragical history of "inauspicious stars" which hardly any man, of the many who have handled it in prose and verse, has been able to spoil.

Our Middle English form is not consummate, and is in some places crude in manner and in sentiment.

But it is notable that the exaggerated and inartistic repulsiveness of Mark, resorted to by later writers as a rather rudimentary means of exciting compassion for the lovers, is not to be found here; in fact, one of the most poetical touches in the piece is one of sympathy for the luckless husband, when he sees the face of his faithless queen slumbering by her lover's side with the sun on it.