Gestes de Manuel_ and _La Haulte Histoire de Jurgen_, more or less
comparison is inevitable. And Codman, I believe, has put the gist of the
matter succinctly enough.

Says Codman: "The Gestes are mundane stories, the History is a cosmic
affair, in that, where Manuel faces the world, Jurgen considers the
universe.... Dom Manuel is the Achilles of Poictesme, as Jurgen is its
Ulysses."

And, roughly, the distinction serves. Yet minute consideration
discovers, I think, in these two sets of legends a more profound, if
subtler, difference, in the handling of the protagonist: with Jurgen all
of the physical and mental man is rendered as a matter of course;
whereas in dealing with Manuel there is, always, I believe, a certain
perceptible and strange, if not inexplicable, aloofness. Manuel did thus
and thus, Manuel said so and so, these legends recount: yes, but never
anywhere have I detected any firm assertion as to Manuel's thoughts and
emotions, nor any peep into the workings of this hero's mind. He is
"done" from the outside, always at arm's length. It is not merely that
Manuel's nature is tinctured with the cool unhumanness of his father the
water-demon: rather, these old poets of Poictesme would seem, whether of
intention or no, to have dealt with their national hero as a person,
howsoever admirable in many of his exploits, whom they have never been
able altogether to love, or entirely to sympathize with, or to view
quite without distrust.

There are several ways of accounting for this fact,--ranging from the
hurtful as well as beneficent aspect of the storm-god, to the natural
inability of a poet to understand a man who succeeds in everything: but
the fact is, after all, of no present importance save that it may well