We are indebted to this cycle for several well-known works of fiction, such as the tale of patient Griseldis, the gentle and meek-spirited heroine who has become the personification of long-suffering and charity.

After the mediaeval writers had made much use of this tale, it was taken up in turn by Boccaccio and Chaucer, who have made it immortal.
The Norman tale of King Robert of Sicily, so beautifully rendered in verse by Longfellow in his "Tales of a Wayside Inn," also belongs to this cycle, and some authorities claim that it includes the famous animal epic "Reynard the Fox," of which we have given an outline.

The story of Reynard the Fox is one of the most important mediaeval contributions to the literature of the world, and is the source from which many subsequent writers have drawn the themes for their fables.
[Sidenote: Classical cycle.] A very large class of romances, common to all European nations during the middle ages, has also been purposely omitted from the foregoing pages.

This is the so-called "classical cycle," or the romances based on the Greek and Latin epics, which were very popular during the age of chivalry.

They occupy so prominent a place in mediaeval literature, however, that we must bespeak a few moments' attention to their subjects.
In these classical romances the heroes of antiquity have lost many of their native characteristics, and are generally represented as knight-errants, and made to talk and act as such knights would.