And he was entitled to triumph over them, for they were the only white roses there, and had been secured by himself, like the wandering urchin he was with a spice of knight-errantry in his composition, quite ready to jump over walls and cajole damsels in order to deck a bride with snowy blooms.

The talent of certain littérateurs of the sixteenth century exercised itself in that class where the persons are all conventional, or the descriptions are all imaginative, and made a portrait of the Mussulman society so exact that the romances of Esplandian, Amadis de Gaul, and others, which evoked the delicious knight-errantry of Don Quixote, can present a picture of the veritable chivalry of the Middle Ages.

One of the most dazzling and successful inventors in modern times, was Messmer, who commenced his career of medical knight-errantry at Vienna.