chap, ix.] ST. JOHN OF JERUSALEM. 11 l

Florine, the Duke of Burgundy’s daughter, dis-appeared with the young Crown Prince of Denmark,and if it gave rise to much fable and rumours, yetfor certain where and how they ended was neverdiscovered ; though her afflicted father went seek-ing her over all the then known world for severalyears. And if Tasso relates how they died, it isthat they offered a fair field for imagination—theperhaps grandest and most difficult of a poet’sattributes. What is uncertain is common to every-body, and open to invention; difficile est, propriecommunia dicere; it is in some sort a creation, andmakes him (what he is in no sense otherwise) acreator.

But early in Asia had the crusaders begun fol-lowing the hideous example of the Turks, in cut-ting off the heads of the slain, and riding with themdangling from their pommels, and threw a thousandof them at the enemy within Nice, with their be-sieging engines; and, filling sacks with anotherthousand heads, sent them as a present to theGreek Emperor.

But while Tancred was so cleverly employed inCilicia, Baldwin (Godfrey’s next brother, and theEnglish Queen’s father), devoured with ambition,and thinking the East had better things than anyto be expected at Jerusalem, or accomplishment of