But this also is no bad story.
The limits of this volume admit of not much farther "argument" (though the writer would very gladly give it) of these minor romances of adventure, Arthurian and other.

Ellis's easily accessible book supplies abstracts of the main Arthurian story before Malory; of the two most famous, though by no means best, of all the non-Arthurian romances, _Guy of Warwick_ and _Bevis of Hampton_ (the former of which was handled and rehandled from age to age, moralised, curtailed, lengthened, and hashed up in every form); of the brilliant and vigorous _Richard Coeur-de-Lion_; of the less racy Charlemagne romances in English; of the _Seven Wise Masters_, brought from the East and naturalised all over Europe; of the delightful love story of _Florice and Blancheflour_; of that powerful and pathetic legend of the _Proud King_ (Robert of Sicily), which Longfellow and Mr.William Morris both modernised, each in his way; of those other legends, _Sir Isumbras_ and _Amis and Amillion_, which are so beautiful to those who can appreciate the mediaeval mind, and to the beauty of which others seem insensible; of _Sir Triamond_ and _Sir Eglamour_ (examples of the romance at its weakest); of the exceedingly spirited and interesting _Ipomydon_, and of some others, including the best of Scotch romances, _Sir Eger, Sir Grame, and Sir Graysteel_.

But Ellis could not know others, and he left alone yet others that he might have known--the exquisite _Sir Launfal_ of Thomas Chester at the beginning of the fifteenth century, where an unworthy presentment of Guinevere is compensated by the gracious image of Launfal's fairy love; the lively adventures of _William of Palerne_, who had a werewolf for his friend and an emperor's daughter for his love, eloping with her in white bear-skins, the unusual meat of which was being cooked in her father's kitchen; _Sir Orfeo_--Orpheus and Eurydice, with a happy ending; _Emare_, one of the tales of innocent but persecuted heroines of which Chaucer's Constance is the best known; _Florence of Rome_; the rather famous _Squire of Low Degree; Sir Amadas_, not a very good handling of a fine motive, charity to a corpse; many others.
Nor does he seem to have known one of the finest of all--the alliterative romance of _Gawain and the Green Knight_ which, since Dr.
Morris published it some forty years ago for the Early English Text Society, has made its way through text-books into more general knowledge than most of its fellows enjoy.

In this the hero is tempted repeatedly, elaborately, and with great knowledge of nature and no small command of art on the teller's part, by the wife of his host and destined antagonist.

He resists in the main, but succumbs in the point of accepting a magic preservative as a gift: and is discovered and lectured accordingly.