the Bibliotheque Elzevirienne some of the most striking fragments of it
may be found, edited with much intelligence. In one of these
thirteenth-century stories, Li Amitiez de Ami et Amile, that free play
of human affection, of the claims of which Abelard's story is an
assertion, makes itself felt in the incidents of a great friendship, a
friendship pure and generous, pushed to a sort of passionate exaltation,
and more than faithful unto death. Such comradeship, though instances of
it are to be found everywhere, is still especially a classical motive;
Chaucer expressing the sentiment of it so strongly in an antique tale,
that one knows not whether the love of both Palamon and Arcite for
Emelya, or of those two for each other, is the chiefer subject of the
Knight's Tale--
He cast his eyen upon Emelya,
And therewithal he bleynte and cried, ah!
As that he stongen were unto the herte.
What reader does not refer part of the bitterness of that cry to the
spoiling, already foreseen, of that fair friendship, which had hitherto
made the prison of the two lads sweet with its daily offices--though the
friendship is saved at last?

The friendship of Amis and Amile is deepened by the romantic
circumstance of an entire personal resemblance between the two heroes,
so that they pass for each other again and again, and thereby into many
strange adventures; that curious interest of the Doppelgaenger, which
begins among the stars with the Dioscuri, being entwined in and out
through all the incidents of the story, like an outward token of the
inward similitude of their souls. With this, again, like a second
reflexion of that inward similitude, is connected the conceit of two
marvellously beautiful cups, also exactly like each other--children's
cups, of wood, but adorned with gold and precious stones. These two