In Sir Walter Scott's "Essay on Romance," when he speaks of the new mould
in which the subjects of the old metrical stories were cast by the school
of prose romancers which arose in the 13th century, we find the following
words: -
"Whatever fragments or shadows of true history may yet remain hidden
under the mass of accumulated fable which had been heaped upon them
during successive ages, must undoubtedly be sought in the metrical
romances.... But those prose authors who wrote under the imaginary names
of RUSTICIEN DE PISE, Robert de Borron, and the like, usually seized
upon the subject of some old minstrel; and recomposing the whole
narrative after their own fashion, with additional character and
adventure, totally obliterated in that operation any shades which
remained of the original and probably authentic tradition," &c.[6]
Evidently, therefore, Sir Walter regarded Rustician of Pisa as a person
belonging to the same ghostly company as his own Cleishbothams and
Dryasdusts. But in this we see that he was wrong.
In the great Paris Library and elsewhere there are manuscript volumes
containing the stories of the Round Table abridged and somewhat clumsily
combined from the various Prose Romances of that cycle, such as Sir
Tristan, Lancelot, Palamedes, Giron le Courtois, &c., which had been
composed, it would seem, by various Anglo-French gentlemen at the court of
Henry III., styled, or styling themselves, Gasses le Blunt, Luces du Gast,
Robert de Borron, and Helis de Borron.
