CHAPTER III.

THE MATTER OF BRITAIN.

ATTRACTIONS OF THE ARTHURIAN LEGEND. DISCUSSIONS ON THEIR

SOURCES. THE PERSONALITY OF ARTHUR. THE FOUR WITNESSES.

THEIR TESTIMONY. THE VERSION OF GEOFFREY. ITS LACUNÆ. HOW

THE LEGEND GREW. WACE. LAYAMON. THE ROMANCES PROPER. WALTER

MAP. ROBERT DE BORRON. CHRESTIEN DE TROYES. PROSE OR VERSE

FIRST? A LATIN GRAAL-BOOK. THE MABINOGION. THE LEGEND

ITSELF. THE STORY OF JOSEPH OF ARIMATHEA. MERLIN. LANCELOT.

THE LEGEND BECOMES DRAMATIC. STORIES OF GAWAIN AND OTHER

KNIGHTS. SIR TRISTRAM. HIS STORY ALMOST CERTAINLY CELTIC.

SIR LANCELOT. THE MINOR KNIGHTS. ARTHUR. GUINEVERE. THE

GRAAL. HOW IT PERFECTS THE STORY. NATURE OF THIS PERFECTION.

NO SEQUEL POSSIBLE. LATIN EPISODES. THE LEGEND AS A WHOLE.

THE THEORIES OF ITS ORIGIN. CELTIC. FRENCH. ENGLISH.

LITERARY. THE CELTIC THEORY. THE FRENCH CLAIMS. THE THEORY

OF GENERAL LITERARY GROWTH. THE ENGLISH OR ANGLO-NORMAN

PRETENSIONS. ATTEMPTED HYPOTHESIS.

[Sidenote: _Attractions of the Arthurian Legend._]

To English readers, and perhaps not to English readers only, the

middle division of the three great romance-subjects[43] ought to be of

far higher interest than the others; and that not merely, even in the

English case, for reasons of local patriotism. The mediæval versions

of classical story, though attractive to the highest degree as

evidence of the extraordinary plastic power of the period, which could

transform all art to its own image and guise, and though not destitute

of individual charm here and there, must always be mainly curiosities.

The cycle of Charlemagne, a genuine growth and not merely an

incrustation or transformation, illustrated, moreover, by particular

examples of the highest merit, is exposed on the one hand to the

charge of a certain monotony, and on the other to the objection that,

beautiful as it is, it is dead. For centuries, except in a few

deliberate literary exercises, the king _à la barbe florie_ has

inspired no modern singer--his _geste_ is extinct. But the Legend of

Arthur, the latest to take definite form of the three, has shown by

far the greatest vitality. From generation to generation it has taken

new forms, inspired new poetries. The very latest of the centuries has

been the most prolific in contributions of any since the end of the

Middle Ages; and there is no sufficient reason why the lineage should

ever stop. For while the romance of antiquity is a mere "sport," an

accident of time and circumstance, the _chanson de geste_, majestic

and interesting as it is, representative as it is to a certain extent

of a nation and a language, has the capital defect of not being

adaptable. Having little or no allegorical capacity, little "soul," so

to speak, it was left by the tide of time on the shores thereof

without much hope of floating and living again. The Arthurian Legend,

if not from the very first, yet from the first moment when it assumed

vernacular forms, lent itself to that double meaning which, though it

is open to abuse, and was terribly abused in these very ages, is after

all the salvation of things literary, since every age adopting the

first and outer meaning can suit the second and inner to its own taste

and need.

[Footnote 43: See the quotation from Jean Bodel, p. 26, note. The

literature of the Arthurian question is very large; and besides the

drawbacks referred to in the text, much of it is scattered in

periodicals. The most useful recent things in English are Mr Nutt's

_Studies on the Legend of the Holy Grail_ (London, 1888); Professor

Rhys's _Arthurian Legend_ (Oxford, 1891); and the extensive

introduction to Dr Sommer's _Malory_ (London, 1890). In French the

elaborate papers on different parts which M. Gaston Paris brings out

at intervals in _Romania_ cannot be neglected; and M. Loth's surveys

of the subject there and in the _Revue Celtique_ (October 1892) are

valuable. Naturally, there has been a great deal in German, the best

being, perhaps, Dr Kölbing's long introduction to his reprint of

_Arthour and Merlin_ (Leipzig, 1890). Other books will be mentioned in

subsequent notes; but a complete and impartial history of the whole

subject, giving the contents, with strictly literary criticism only,

of all the texts, and merely summarising theories as to origin, &c.,

is still wanting, and sorely wanted. Probably there is still no

better, as there is certainly no more delightful, book on the matter

than M. Paulin Paris's _Romans de la Table Ronde_ (5 vols., Paris,

1868-77). The monograph by M. Clédat on the subject in M. Petit de

Julleville's new _History_ (_v. supra_, p. 23, note) is unfortunately

not by any means one of the best of these studies.]

[Sidenote: _Discussions on their sources._]

That the vitality of the Legend is in part, if not wholly, due to the

strange crossing and blending of its sources, I at least have no

doubt. To discuss these sources at all, much more to express any

definite opinion on the proportions and order of their blending, is a

difficult matter for any literary student, and dangerous withal; but

the adventure is of course not to be wholly shirked here. The matter

has, both in England and abroad, been quite recently the subject of

that rather acrimonious debating by which scholars in modern tongues

seem to think it a point of honour to rival the scholars of a former

day in the classics, though the vocabulary used is less picturesque. A

great deal of this debate, too, turns on matters of sheer opinion, in

regard to which language only appropriate to matters of sheer

knowledge is too often used. The candid inquirer, informed that Mr, or

M., or Herr So-and-so, has "proved" such and such a thing in such and

such a book or dissertation, turns to the text, to find to his

grievous disappointment that nothing is "proved"--but that more or

less probable arguments are advanced with less or more temper against

or in favour of this or that hypothesis. Even the dates of MSS., which

in all such cases must be regarded as the primary data, are very

rarely _data_ at all, but only (to coin, or rather adapt, a

much-needed term) _speculata_. And the matter is further complicated

by the facts that extremely few scholars possess equal and adequate

knowledge of Celtic, English, French, German, and Latin, and that the

best palæographers are by no means always the best literary critics.

Where every one who has handled the subject has had to confess, or

should have confessed, imperfect equipment in one or more respects,

there is no shame in confessing one's own shortcomings. I cannot speak

as a Celtic scholar; and I do not pretend to have examined MSS. But

for a good many years I have been familiar with the printed texts and

documents in Latin, English, French, and German, and I believe that I

have not neglected any important modern discussions of the subject.

To have no Celtic is the less disqualification in that all the most

qualified Celtic scholars themselves admit, however highly they may

rate the presence of the Celtic element in spirit, that no texts of

the legend in its romantic form at present existing in the Celtic

tongues are really ancient. And it is understood that there is now

very little left unprinted that can throw much light on the general

question. I shall therefore endeavour, without entering into

discussions on minor points which would be unsuitable to the book, to

give what seems to me the most probable view of the case, corrected by

(though not by any means adjusted in a hopeless zigzag of deference

to) the various authorities, from Ritson to Professor Rhys, from

Paulin Paris to M. Loth, and from San Marte to Drs Förster and Zimmer.

The first and the most important thing--a thing which has been by no

means always or often done--is to keep the question of Arthur apart

from the question of the Arthurian Legend.

[Sidenote: _The personality of Arthur._]

That there was no such a person as Arthur in reality was at one time a

not very uncommon opinion among men who could call themselves

scholars, though of late it has yielded to probable if not certain

arguments. The two most damaging facts are the entire silence of Bede

and that of Gildas in regard to him. The silence of Bede might be

accidental, and he wrote _ex hypothesi_ nearly two centuries after

Arthur's day. Yet his collections were extremely careful, and the

neighbourhood of his own Northumbria was certainly not that in which

traditions of Arthur should have been least rife. That Gildas should

say nothing is more surprising and more difficult of explanation. For

putting aside altogether the positive testimony of the _Vita Gildæ_,

to which we shall come presently, Gildas was, again _ex hypothesi_, a

contemporary of Arthur's, and must have known all about him. If the

compound of scolding and lamentation known as _De Excidio Britanniæ_

is late and a forgery, we should expect it to contain some reference

to the king; if it is early and genuine, it is difficult to see how

such reference could possibly be omitted.

[Sidenote: _The four witnesses._]

At the same time, mere silence can never establish anything but a

presumption; and the presumption is in this case rebutted by far

stronger probabilities on the other side. The evidence is here drawn

from four main sources, which we may range in the order of their

chronological bearing. First, there are the Arthurian place-names, and

the traditions respecting them; secondly, the fragments of genuine

early Welsh reference to Arthur; thirdly, the famous passage of

Nennius, which introduces him for the first time to probably dated

literature; fourthly, the curious references in the above-referred-to

_Vita Gildæ_ of, or attributed to, Caradoc of Lancarvan. After this

last, or at a time contemporary with it, we come to the comparatively

detailed account of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and the beginning of the

Legend proper.

[Sidenote: _Their testimony._]

To summarise this evidence as carefully but as briefly as possible, we

find, in almost all parts of Britain beyond the range of the first

Saxon conquests, but especially in West Wales, Strathclyde, and

Lothian, certain place-names connecting themselves either with Arthur

himself or with the early catalogue of his battles.[44] We find

allusions to him in Welsh poetry which may be as old as the sixth

century--allusions, it is true, of the vaguest and most meagre kind,

and touching no point of his received story except his mysterious

death or no-death, but fairly corroborative of his actual existence.

Nennius--the much-debated Nennius, whom general opinion attributes to

the ninth century, but who _may_ be as early as the eighth, and cannot

well be later than the tenth--gives us the catalogue of the twelve

battles, and the exploits of Arthur against the Saxons, in a single

paragraph containing no reference to any but military matters, and

speaking of Arthur not as king but as a _dux bellorum_ commanding

kings, many of whom were more noble than himself.

[Footnote 44: The late Mr Skene, with great learning and ingenuity,

endeavoured in his _Four Ancient Books of Wales_ to claim all or

almost all these place-names for Scotland in the wide sense. This can

hardly be admitted: but impartial students of the historical

references and the romances together will observe the constant

introduction of northern localities in the latter, and the express

testimony in the former to the effect that Arthur was general of _all_

the British forces. We need not rob Cornwall to pay Lothian. For the

really old references in Welsh poetry see, besides Skene, Professor

Rhys, _op. cit._ Gildas and Nennius (but not the _Vita Gildæ_) will be

found conveniently translated, with Geoffrey himself, in a volume of

Bohn's Historical Library, _Six Old English Chronicles_. The E.E.T.S.

edition of _Merlin_ contains a very long _excursus_ by Mr

Stuart-Glennie on the place-name question.]

The first authority from whom we get any _personal_ account of Arthur

is Caradoc, if Caradoc it be. The biographer makes his hero St Gildas

(I put minor and irrelevant discrepancies aside) contemporary with

Arthur, whom he loved, and who was king of all Greater Britain. But

his brother kings did not admit this sovereignty quietly, and often

put him to flight. At last Arthur overthrew and slew Hoel, who was his

_major natu_, and became unquestioned _rex universalis Britanniæ_, but

incurred the censure of the Church for killing Hoel. From this sin

Gildas himself at length absolved him. But King Melvas carried off

King Arthur's queen, and it was only after a year that Arthur found

her at Glastonbury and laid siege to that place. Gildas and the abbot,

however, arranged matters, and the queen was given up. It is most

proper to add in this place that probably at much the same time as the

writings of Caradoc and of Geoffrey (_v. infra_), or at a time not

very distant, William of Malmesbury and Giraldus Cambrensis give us

Glastonbury traditions as to the tomb of Arthur, &c., which show that

by the middle of the twelfth century such traditions were clustering

thickly about the Isle of Avalon. All this time, however, it is very

important to notice that there is hardly the germ, and, except in

Caradoc, not even the germ, of what makes the Arthurian Legend

interesting to us, even of what we call the Arthurian Legend. Although

the fighting with the Saxons plays an important part in the _Merlin_

branches of the story, it has extremely little to do with the local

traditions, and was continually reduced in importance by the men of

real genius, especially Mapes, Chrestien, and, long afterwards,

Malory, who handled them. The escapade of Melvas communicates a touch

rather nearer to the perfect form, but only a little nearer to it. In

fact, there is hardly more in the story at this point than in hundreds

of other references in early history or fiction to obscure kinglets

who fought against invaders.

[Sidenote: _The version of Geoffrey._]

And it is again very important to observe that, though under the hands

of Geoffrey of Monmouth the story at once acquires more romantic

proportions, it is still not in the least, or only in the least, the

story that we know. The advance is indeed great. The wonder-working of

Merlin is brought in to help the patriotism of Arthur. The story of

Uther's love for Igraine at once alters the mere chronicle into a

romance. Arthur, the fruit of this passion, succeeds his father,

carries on victorious war at home and abroad, is crowned with

magnificence at Caerleon, is challenged by and defeats the Romans, is

about to pass the Alps when he hears that his nephew Mordred, left in

charge of the kingdom, has assumed the crown, and that Guinevere

(Guanhumara, of whom we have only heard before as "of a noble Roman

family, and surpassing in beauty all the women of the island") has

wickedly married him. Arthur returns, defeats Mordred at Rutupiæ

(after this battle Guinevere takes the veil), and, at Winchester,

drives him to the extremity of Cornwall, and there overthrows and

kills him. But the renowned King Arthur himself was mortally wounded,

and "being carried thence to the Isle of Avallon to be cured of his

wounds, he gave up the crown to his kinsman Constantine." And so

Arthur passes out of Geoffrey's story, in obedience to one of the

oldest, and certainly the most interesting, of what seem to be the

genuine Welsh notices of the king--"Not wise is it to seek the grave

of Arthur."

[Sidenote: _Its_ lacunæ.]

A few people, perhaps, who read this little book will need to be told

that Geoffrey attributed the new and striking facts which he sprung

upon his contemporaries to a British book which Walter, Archdeacon of

Oxford, had brought out of Armorica: and that not the slightest trace

of this most interesting and important work has ever been found. It is

a thousand pities that it has not survived, inasmuch as it was not

only "a very ancient book in the British tongue," but contained "a

continuous story in an elegant style." However, the inquiry whether

Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, did or did not belong to the ancient

British family of Harris may be left to historians proper. To the

specially literary historian the chief point of interest is first to

notice how little, if Geoffrey really did take his book from "British"

sources, those sources apparently contained of the Arthurian Legend

proper as we now know it. An extension of the fighting with Saxons at

home, and the addition of that with Romans abroad, the Igraine

episode, or rather overture, the doubtless valuable introduction of

Merlin, the treason of Mordred and Guinevere, and the retirement to

Avalon--that is practically all. No Round Table; no knights (though

"Walgan, the king's nephew," is, of course, an early appearance of

Gawain); none of the interesting difficulties about Arthur's

succession: an entire absence of personal characteristics about

Guinevere (even that peculiarity of hers which a French critic has

politely described as her being "very subject to be carried off," and

which already appears in Caradoc, being changed to a commonplace act

of ambitious infidelity with Mordred): and, most remarkable of all, no

Lancelot, and no Holy Grail.

Nevertheless Geoffrey had, as it has been the fashion to say of late

years, "set the heather on fire," and perhaps in no literary instance

on record did the blaze spread and heighten itself with such

extraordinary speed and intensity. His book must have been written a

little before the middle of the twelfth century: by the end thereof

the legend was, except for the embellishments and amplifications which

the Middle Age was always giving, complete.

[Sidenote: _How the Legend grew._]

In the account of its probable origins and growth which follows

nothing can be further from the writer's wish than to emulate the

confident dogmatism of those who claim to have proved or disproved

this or that fact or hypothesis. In the nature of the case proof is

impossible; we cannot go further than probability. It is unfortunate

that some of the disputants on this, as on other kindred subjects,

have not more frequently remembered the admirable words of the

greatest modern practitioner and though he lacked some more recent

information, the shrewdest modern critic of romance itself.[45] I

need only say that though I have not in the least borrowed from

either, and though I make neither responsible for my views, these

latter, as they are about to be stated, will be found most to resemble

those of Sir Frederic Madden in England and M. Paulin Paris in

France--the two critics who, coming after the age of wild guesswork

and imperfect reading, and before that of a scholarship which,

sometimes at least, endeavours to vindicate itself by innovation for

the sake of innovation, certainly equalled, and perhaps exceeded, any

others in their familiarity with the actual texts. With that

familiarity, so far as MSS. go, I repeat that I do not pretend to vie.

But long and diligent reading of the printed material, assisted by

such critical lights as critical practice in more literatures than one

or two for many years may give, has led me to the belief that when

they agreed they were pretty sure to be right, and that when they

differed, the authority of either was at least equal, as authority, to

anything subsequent.

[Footnote 45: "Both these subjects of discussion [authorship and

performance of Romances] have been the source of great controversy

among antiquaries--a class of men who, be it said with their

forgiveness, are apt to be both positive and polemical upon the very

points which are least susceptible of proof, and least valuable, if

the truth could be ascertained."--Sir Walter Scott, "Essay on

Romance," _Prose Works_, vi. 154.]

[Sidenote: _Wace._]

The known or reasonably inferred historical procession of the Legend

is as follows. Before the middle of the twelfth century we have

nothing that can be called a story. At almost that exact point (the

subject of the dedication of the _Historia Britonum_ died in 1146)

Geoffrey supplies the outlines of such a story. They were at once

seized upon for filling in. Before many years two well-known writers

had translated Geoffrey's Latin into French, another Geoffrey, Gaimar,

and Wace of Jersey. Gaimar's _Brut_ (a title which in a short time

became generic) has not come down to us: Wace's (written in 1155) has,

and though there is, as yet, no special attention bestowed upon

Arthur, the Arthurian part of the story shares the process of

dilatation and amplification usual in the Middle Ages. The most

important of these additions is the appearance of the Round Table.

[Sidenote: _Layamon._]

As Geoffrey fell into the hands of Wace, so did Wace fall into those

of Layamon; but here the result is far more interesting, both for the

history of the legend itself and for its connection with England. Not

only did the priest of Ernley or Arley-on-Severn do the English tongue

the inestimable service of introducing Arthur to it, not only did he

write the most important book by far, both in size, in form, and in

matter, that was written in English between the Conquest and the

fourteenth century, but he added immensely to the actual legend. It is

true that these additions still do not exactly give us the Arthur whom

we know, for they still concern the wars with the Saxons and Romans

chiefly. But if it were only that we find first[46] in Layamon the

introduction of "elves" at Arthur's birth, and his conveyance by them

at death in a magic boat to Queen "Argante" at Avalon, it would be

almost enough. But there is much more. The Uther story is enlarged,

and with it the appearances of Merlin; the foundation of the Round

Table receives added attention; the voluntary yielding of Guinevere,

here called Wenhaver, is insisted upon, and Gawain (Walwain) and

Bedivere (Beduer) make their appearance. But there is still no

Lancelot, and still no Grail.

[Footnote 46: A caution may be necessary as to this word "first."

Nearly all the dates are extremely uncertain, and it is highly

probable that intermediate texts of great importance are lost, or not

yet found. But Layamon gives us Wace as an authority, and this is not

in Wace. See Madden's edition (London, 1847).]

[Sidenote: _The Romances proper._]

These additions, which on the one side gave the greatest part of the

secular interest, on the other almost the whole of the mystical

attraction, to the complete story, had, however, it seems probable,

been actually added before Layamon wrote. For the date of the earlier

version of his _Brut_ is put by the best authorities at not earlier

than 1200, and it is also, according to such authorities, almost

certain that the great French romances (which contain the whole legend

with the exception of part of the Tristram story, and of hitherto

untraced excursions like Malory's Beaumains) had been thrown into

shape. But the origin, the authorship, and the order of _Merlin_ in

its various forms, of the _Saint Graal_ and the _Quest_ for it, of

_Lancelot_ and the _Mort Artus_,--these things are the centre of

nearly all the disputes upon the subject.

[Sidenote: _Walter Map._]

A consensus of MS. authority ascribes the best and largest part of

the _prose_ romances,[47] especially those dealing with Lancelot and

the later fortunes of the Graal and the Round Table company, to no

less a person than the famous Englishman Walter Mapes, or Map, the

author of _De Nugis Curialium_, the reputed author (_v._ chap. i.) of

divers ingenious Latin poems, friend of Becket, Archdeacon of Oxford,

churchman, statesman, and wit. No valid reason whatever has yet been

shown for questioning this attribution, especially considering the

number, antiquity, and strength of the documents by which it is

attested. Map's date (1137-96) is the right one; his abilities were

equal to any literary performance; his evident familiarity with things

Welsh (he seems to have been a Herefordshire man) would have informed

him of Welsh tradition, if there was any, and the _De Nugis Curialium_

shows us in him, side by side with a satirical and humorous bent, the

leaning to romance and to the marvellous which only extremely shallow

people believe to be alien from humour. But it is necessary for

scholarship of the kind just referred to to be always devising some

new thing. Frenchmen, Germans, and Celticising partisans have grudged

an Englishman the glory of the exploit; and there has been of late a

tendency to deny or slight Map's claims. His deposition, however,

rests upon no solid argument, and though it would be exceedingly rash,

considering the levity with which the copyists in mediæval MSS.

attributed authorship, to assert positively that Map wrote _Lancelot_,

or the _Quest of the Saint Graal_, it may be asserted with the utmost

confidence that it has not been proved that he did not.

[Footnote 47: These, both Map's and Borron's (_v. infra_), with some

of the verse forms connected with them, are in a very puzzling

condition for study. M. Paulin Paris's book, above referred to,

abstracts most of them; the actual texts, as far as published, are

chiefly to be found in Hucher, _Le Saint Graal_ (3 vols., Le Mans,

1875-78); in Michel's _Petit Saint Graal_ (Paris, 1841); in the

_Merlin_ of MM. G. Paris and Ulrich (Paris, 1886). But _Lancelot_ and

the later parts are practically inaccessible in any modern edition.]

[Sidenote: _Robert de Borron._]

The other claimant for the authorship of a main part of the story--in

this case the Merlin part, and the long history of the Graal from the

days of Joseph of Arimathea downwards--is a much more shadowy person,

a certain Robert de Borron, a knight of the north of France. Nobody

has much interest in disturbing Borron's claims, though they also have

been attacked; and it is only necessary to say that there is not the

slightest ground for supposing that he was an ancestor of Lord Byron,

as was once very gratuitously done, the time when he was first heard

of happening to coincide with the popularity of that poet.

[Sidenote: _Chrestien de Troyes._]

The third personage who is certainly or uncertainly connected by name

with the original framework of the legend is again more substantial

than Robert de Borron, though less so than Walter Map. As his surname,

derived from his birthplace, indicates, Chrestien de Troyes was of

Champenois extraction, thus belonging to the province which, with

Normandy, contributed most to early French literature. And he seems to

have been attached not merely to the court of his native prince, the

Count of Champagne, but to those of the neighbouring Walloon lordships

or principalities of Flanders and Hainault. Of his considerable work

(all of it done, it would seem, before the end of the twelfth century)

by far the larger part is Arthurian--the immense romance of _Percevale

le Gallois_,[48] much of which, however, is the work of continuators;

the interesting episode of the Lancelot saga, called _Le Chevalier à

la Charette_; _Erec et Énide_, the story known to every one from Lord

Tennyson's idyll; the _Chevalier au Lyon_, a Gawain legend; and

_Cligès_, which is quite on the outside of the Arthurian group. All

these works are written in octosyllabic couplets, particularly light

and skipping, somewhat destitute of force and grip, but full of grace

and charm. Of their contents more presently.

[Footnote 48: Ed. Potvin, 6 vols., Mons, 1866-70. Dr Förster has

undertaken a complete Chrestien, of which the 2d and 3d vols. are

_Yvain_ ("Le Chevalier au Lyon") and _Erec_ (Halle, 1887-90). _Le

Chevalier à la Charette_ should be read in Dr Jonckbloët's invaluable

parallel edition with the prose of _Lancelot_ (The Hague, 1850). On

this last see M. G. Paris, _Romania_, xii. 459--an admirable paper,

though I do not agree with it.]

Next to the questions of authorship and of origin in point of

difficulty come two others--"Which are the older: the prose or the

verse romances?" and, "Was there a Latin original of the Graal story?"

[Sidenote: _Prose or verse first?_]

With regard to the first, it has long been laid down as a general

axiom, and it is no doubt as a rule true, that prose is always later

than verse, and that in mediæval times especially the order is almost

invariable. Verse; unrhymed and half-disrhythmed prose; prose pure and

simple: that is what we find. For many reasons, however, drawn partly

from the presumed age of the MSS. and partly from internal evidence,

the earlier scholars who considered the Arthurian matter, especially

M. Paulin Paris, came to the conclusion that here the prose romances

were, if not universally, yet for the most part, the earlier. And

this, though it is denied by M. Paris's equally learned son, still

seems the more probable opinion. For, in the first place, by this time

prose, though not in a very advanced condition, was advanced enough

not to make it absolutely necessary for it to lag behind verse, as had

been the case with the _chansons de geste_. And in the second place,

while the prose romances are far more comprehensive than the verse,

the age of the former seems to be beyond question such that there

could be no need, time, or likelihood for the reduction to a general

prose summary of separate verse originals, while the separate verse

episodes are very easily intelligible as developed from parts of the

prose original.[49]

[Footnote 49: The parallel edition, above referred to, of the

_Chevalier à la Charette_ and the corresponding prose settled this in

my mind long ago; and though I have been open to unsettlement since, I

have not been unsettled. The most unlucky instance of that

over-positiveness to which I have referred above is M. Clédat's

statement that "nous savons" that the prose romances are later than

the verse. We certainly do not "know" this any more than we know the

contrary. There is important authority both ways; there is fair

argument both ways; but the positive evidence which alone can turn

opinion into knowledge has not been produced, and probably does not

exist.]

[Sidenote: _A Latin Graal-book._]

With regard to the Latin Graal-book, the testimony of the romances

themselves is formal enough as to its existence. But no trace of it

has been found, and its loss, if it existed, is contrary to all

probability. For _ex hypothesi_ (and if we take one part of the

statement we must take the rest) it was not a recent composition, but

a document, whether of miraculous origin or not, of considerable age.

Why it should only at this time have come to light, why it should have

immediately perished, and why none of the persons who took interest

enough in it to turn it into the vernacular should have transmitted

his copy to posterity, are questions difficult, or rather impossible,

to answer. But here, again, the wise critic will not peremptorily

deny. He will say that there _may_ be a Latin Graal-book, and that

when that book is produced, and stands the test of examination, he

will believe in it; but that until it appears he will be contented

with the French originals of the end of the twelfth century. Of the

characteristic and probable origins of the Graal story itself, as of

those of the larger Legend of which it forms a part, it will be time

enough to speak when we have first given an account of the general

history as it took shape, probably before the twelfth century had

closed, certainly very soon after the thirteenth had opened. For the

whole Legend--even excluding the numerous ramifications into

independent or semi-independent _romans d'aventures_--is not found in

any single book or compilation. The most extensive, and by far the

best, that of our own Malory, is very late, extremely though far from

unwisely eclectic, and adjusted to the presumed demands of readers,

and to the certain existence in the writer of a fine literary sense of

fitness. It would be trespassing on the rights of a future contributor

to say much directly of Malory; but it must be said here that in what

he omits, as well as in his treatment of what he inserts, he shows

nothing short of genius. Those who call him a mere, or even a bad,

compiler, either have not duly considered the matter or speak

unhappily.

But before we go further it may be well also to say a word on the

Welsh stories, which, though now admitted to be in their present form

later than the Romances, are still regarded as possible originals by

some.

[Sidenote: _The Mabinogion._]

It would hardly be rash to rest the question of the Celtic origin, in

any but the most remote and partial sense, of the Arthurian Romances

on the _Mabinogion_[50] alone. The posteriority of these as we have

them need not be too much dwelt upon. We need not even lay great

stress on what I believe to be a fact not likely to be disputed by

good critics, that the reading of the French and the Welsh-English

versions one after the other, no matter in what order they be taken,

will leave something more than an impression that the French is the

direct original of the Welsh, and that the Welsh, in anything at all

like its present form, could not by any possibility be the original of

the French. The test to which I refer is this. Let any one read, with

as open a mind as he can procure, the three Welsh-French or

French-Welsh romances of _Yvain-Owain_, _Erec-Geraint_, and

_Percivale-Peredur_, and then turn to those that are certainly and

purely Celtic, _Kilhwch and Olwen_, the _Dream of Rhiabwy_ (both of

these Arthurian after a fashion, though quite apart from our Arthurian

Legend), and the fourfold _Mabinogi_, which tells the adventures of

Rhiannon and those of Math ap Matholwy. I cannot conceive this being

done by any one without his feeling that he has passed from one world

into another entirely different,--that the two classes of story simply

_cannot_ by any possibility be, in any more than the remotest

suggestion, the work of the same people, or have been produced under

the same literary covenant.

[Footnote 50: Translated by Lady Charlotte Guest, 2d ed., London,

1877.]

[Sidenote: _The Legend itself._]

Let us now turn to the Legend itself. The story which ends in Avalon

begins in Jerusalem. For though the Graal-legends are undoubtedly

later additions to whatever may have been the original Arthurian

saga--seeing that we find nothing of them in the early Welsh

traditions, nothing in Nennius, nothing in Geoffrey, nothing even in

Wace or Layamon--yet such is the skill with which the unknown or

uncertain authors have worked them into the legend that the whole

makes one indivisible romance. Yet (as the untaught genius of Malory

instinctively perceived) when the Graal-story on the one hand, and the

loves of Lancelot and Guinevere with which it is connected on the

other, came in, they made comparatively otiose and uninteresting the

wars with Saxons and Romans, which in the earlier Legend had occupied

almost the whole room. And accordingly these wars, which still hold a

very large part of the field in the _Merlin_, drop out to some extent

later. The whole cycle consists practically of five parts, each of

which in almost all cases exists in divers forms, and more than one of

which overlaps and is overlapped by one or more of the others. These

five are _Merlin_, the _Saint-Graal_, _Lancelot_, the _Quest of the

Saint-Graal_, and the _Death of Arthur_. Each of the first two pairs

intertwines with the other: the last, _Mort Artus_, completes them

all, and thus its title was not improperly used in later times to

designate the whole Legend.

[Sidenote: _The story of Joseph of Arimathea._]

The starting-point of the whole, in time and incident, is the supposed

revenge of the Jews on Joseph of Arimathea for the part he has taken

in the burial of our Lord. He is thrown into prison and remains there

(miraculously comforted, so that the time seems to him but as a day or

two) till delivered by Titus. Then he and certain more or less

faithful Christians set out in charge of the Holy Graal, which has

served for the Last Supper, which holds Christ's blood, and which is

specially under the guardianship of Joseph's son, the Bishop

"Josephes," to seek foreign lands, and a home for the Holy Vessel.

After a long series of the wildest adventures, in which the

personages, whose names are known rather mistily to readers of Malory

only--King Evelake, Naciens, and others--appear fully, and in which

many marvels take place, the company, or the holier survivors of them,

are finally settled in Britain. Here the imprudence of Evelake (or

Mordrains) causes him to receive the "dolorous stroke," from which

none but his last descendant, Galahad, is to recover him fully. The

most striking of all these adventures, related in various forms in

other parts of the Legend, is the sojourn of Naciens on a desert

island, where he is tempted of the devil; while a very great part is

played throughout by the Legend of the Three Trees, which in

successive ages play their part in the Fall, in the first origin of

mankind according to natural birth, not creation, in the building of

the Temple, and in the Passion. This later legend, a wild but very

beautiful one, dominated the imagination of English mediæval writers

very particularly, and is fully developed, apart from its Arthurian

use, in the vast and interesting miscellany of the _Cursor Mundi_.

[Sidenote: _Merlin._]

But when the Graal and its guardians have been safely established upon

English soil, the connection of the legend with the older and, so to

speak, historical Arthurian traditions, is effected by means of

Merlin, in a manner at least ingenious if not very direct. The results

of the Passion, and especially the establishment on earth of a

Christian monarchy with a sort of palladium in the Saint-Graal,

greatly disturb the equanimity of the infernal regions; and a council

is held to devise counter-policy. It occurs apparently that as this

discomfiture has come by means of the union of divine and human

natures, it can be best opposed by a union of human and diabolic: and

after some minor proceedings a seductive devil is despatched to play

incubus to the last and chastest daughter of a _prud'homme_, who has

been driven to despair and death by previous satanic attacks. The

attempt is successful in a way; but as the victim keeps her chastity

of intention and mind, not only is she herself saved from the legal

consequences of the matter, but her child when born is the celebrated

Merlin, a being endowed with supernatural power and knowledge, and not

always scrupulous in the use of them, but always on the side of the

angels rather than of his paternal kinsfolk. A further and more

strictly literary connection is effected by attributing the knowledge

of the Graal history to his information, conveyed to his master and

pupil Blaise, who writes it (as well as the earlier adventures at

least of the Arthurian era proper) from Merlin's dictation or report.

For some time the various Merlin stories follow Geoffrey in recounting

the adventures of the prophetic child in his youth, with King

Vortigern and others. But he is soon brought (again in accordance with

Geoffrey) into direct responsibility for Arthur, by his share in the

wooing of Igraine. For it is to be observed that--and not in this

instance only--though there is usually some excuse for him, Merlin is

in these affairs more commonly occupied in making two lovers happy

than in attending to the strict dictates of morality. And

thenceforward till his inclusion in his enchanted prison (an affair in

which it is proper to say that the earliest versions give a much more

favourable account of the conduct and motives of the heroine than that

which Malory adopted, and which Tennyson for purposes of poetic

contrast blackened yet further) he plays the part of adviser,

assistant, and good enchanter generally to Arthur and Arthur's

knights. He in some stories directly procures, and in all confirms,

the seating of Arthur on his father's throne; he brings the king's

nephews, Gawain and the rest, to assist their uncle, in some cases

against their own fathers; he presides over the foundation of the

Round Table, and brings about the marriage of Guinevere and Arthur; he

assists, sometimes by actual force of arms, sometimes as head of the

intelligence department, sometimes by simple gramarye, in the

discomfiture not merely of the rival and rebel kinglets, but of the

Saxons and Romans. As has been said, Malory later thought proper to

drop the greater part of this latter business (including the

interminable fights round the _Roche aux Saisnes_ or Saxon rock). And

he also discarded a curious episode which makes a great figure in the

original _Merlin_, the tale of the "false Guinevere," a foster-sister,

namesake, and counterpart of the true princess, who is nearly

substituted for Guinevere herself on her bridal night, and who later

usurps for a considerable time the place and rights of the queen. For

it cannot be too often repeated that Arthur, not even in Malory a

"blameless king" by any means, is in the earlier and original versions

still less blameless, especially in the article of faithfulness to his

wife.

We do not, however, in the _Merlin_ group proper get any tidings of

Lancelot, though Lucan, Kay, Bedivere, and others, as well as Gawain

and the other sons of Lot, make their appearance, and the Arthurian

court and _régime_, as we imagine it with the Round Table, is already

constituted. It is to be observed that in the earlier versions there

is even a sharp rivalry between the "Round Table" proper and the

"Queen's" or younger knights. But this subsides, and the whole is

centred at Camelot, with the realm (until Mordred's treachery) well

under control, and with a constant succession of adventures,

culminating in the greatest of all, the Quest of the Graal or Sangreal

itself. Although there are passages of great beauty, the excessive

mysticism, the straggling conduct of the story, and the extravagant

praise of virginity in and for itself, in the early Graal history,

have offended some readers. In the _Merlin_ proper the incompleteness,

the disproportionate space given to mere kite-and-crow fighting, and

the defect of love-interest, undoubtedly show themselves. Although

Merlin was neither by extraction nor taste likely to emulate the

almost ferocious horror of human affection entertained by Robert de

Borron (if Robert de Borron it was), the authors of his history,

except in the version of his own fatal passion, above referred to,

have touched the subject with little grace or charm. And while the

great and capital tragedies of Lancelot and Guinevere, of Tristram and

Iseult, are wholly lacking, there is an equal lack of such minor

things as the episodes of Lancelot and the two Elaines, of Pelleas and

the Lady of the Lake, and many others. Nor is this lack compensated by

the stories of the incestuous (though on neither side consciously

incestuous, and on the queen's quite innocent) adventure of Arthur

with his sister Margause, of the exceedingly unromantic wooing of

Morgane le Fée, and of the warlock-planned intercourse of King Ban

and the mother of Lancelot.

[Sidenote: _Lancelot._]

Whether it was Walter Map, or Chrestien de Troyes, or both, or

neither, to whom the glory of at once completing and exalting the

story is due, I at least have no pretension to decide. Whosoever did

it, if he did it by himself, was a very great man indeed--a man second

only to Dante among the men of the Middle Age. Even if it was done by

an irregular company of men, each patching and piecing the others'

efforts, the result shows a marvellous "wind of the spirit" abroad and

blowing on that company. As before, the reader of Malory only, though

he has nearly all the best things, has not quite all even of those,

and is without a considerable number of things not quite the best, but

good. The most difficult to justify of the omissions of Sir Thomas is

the early history of the loves of Guinevere and Lancelot, when the

knight was introduced to the queen by Galahault the haughty

prince--"Galeotto," as he appears in the most universally known

passage of Dante himself. Not merely that unforgettable association,

but the charm and grace of the original passage, as well as the

dramatic and ethical justification, so to speak, of the fatal passion

which wrecked at once Lancelot's quest and Arthur's kingdom, combine

to make us regret this exclusion. But Malory's genius was evidently

rather an unconscious than a definitely critical one. And though the

exquisite felicity of his touch in detail is established once for all

by comparing his prose narratives of the Passing of Arthur and the

parting of Lancelot and the queen with the verse[51] from which he

almost beyond question directly took both, he must sometimes have been

bewildered by the mass of material from which he had to select, and

may not always have included or excluded with equally unerring

judgment.

[Footnote 51: _Le Morte Arthur_ (ed. Furnivall, London, 1864), l. 3400

_sqq._]

[Sidenote: _The Legend becomes dramatic._]

We have seen that in the original story of Geoffrey the treason of

Mordred and the final scenes take place while Arthur is warring

against the Romans, very shortly after he has established his

sovereignty in the Isle of Britain. Walter, or Chrestien, or whoever

it was, saw that such a waste of good romantic material could never be

tolerated. The romance is never--it has not been even in the hands of

its most punctilious modern practitioners--very observant of miserable

_minutiæ_ of chronology; and after all, it was reasonable that

Arthur's successes should give him some considerable enjoyment of his

kingdom. It will not do to scrutinise too narrowly, or we should have

to make Arthur a very old man at his death, and Guinevere a lady too

elderly to leave any excuse for her proceedings, in order to

accommodate the birth of Lancelot (which happened, according to the

_Merlin_, after the king came to the throne), the birth of Lancelot's

son Galahad, Galahad's life till even the early age of fifteen, when

knighthood was then given, the Quest of the Sangreal itself, and the

subsequent breaking out of Mordred's rebellion, consequent upon the

war between Lancelot and Arthur after the deaths of Agravain and

Gareth. But the allowance of a golden age of comparatively quiet

sovereignty, of feasts and joustings at Camelot, and Caerleon, and

Carlisle, of adventures major and minor, and of the great Graal-quest,

is but a moderate demand for any romancer to make. At any rate, he or

they made it, and justified the demand amply by the result. The

contents of the central Arthurian story thus elaborated may be divided

into four parts: 1. The miscellaneous adventures of the several

knights, the king himself sometimes taking share in them. 2. Those of

Sir Tristram, of which more presently. 3. The Quest of the Sangreal.

4. The Death of Arthur.

[Sidenote: _Stories of Gawain and other knights._]

Taking these in order, the first, which is the largest in bulk, is

also, and necessarily, the most difficult to summarise in short space.

It is sometimes said that the prominent figure in the earlier stories

is Gawain, who is afterwards by some spite or caprice dethroned in

favour of Lancelot. This is not quite exact, for the bulk of the

Lancelot legends being, as has been said, anterior to the end of the

twelfth century, is much older than the bulk of the Gawain romances,

which, owing their origin to English, and especially to northern,

patriotism, do not seem to date earlier than the thirteenth or even

the fourteenth. But it is true that Gawain, as we have seen, makes an

appearance, though no very elaborate one, in the most ancient forms of

the legend itself, where we hear nothing of Lancelot; and also that

his appearances in _Merlin_ do not bear anything like the contrast

(similar to that afterwards developed in the Iberian romance-cycle as

between Galaor and Amadis) which other authorities make between him

and Lancelot.[52] Generally speaking, the knights are divisible into

three classes. First there are the older knights, from Ulfius (who had

even taken part in the expedition which cheated Igraine) and Antor,

down to Bedivere, Lucan, and the most famous of this group, Sir Kay,

who, alike in older and in later versions, bears the uniform character

of a disagreeable person, not indeed a coward, though of prowess not

equal to his attempts and needs; but a boaster, envious, spiteful, and

constantly provoking by his tongue incidents in which his hands do not

help him out quite sufficiently.[53] Then there is the younger and

main body, of whom Lancelot and Gawain (still keeping Tristram apart)

are the chiefs; and lastly the outsiders, whether the "felon" knights

who are at internecine, or the mere foreigners who are in friendly,

antagonism with the knights of the "Rowntabull."

[Footnote 52: Since I wrote this passage I have learnt with pleasure

that there is a good chance of the whole of the Gawain romances,

English and foreign, being examined together by a very competent hand,

that of Mr I. Gollancz of Christ's College, Cambridge.]

[Footnote 53: The Welsh passages relating to Kay seem to be older than

most others.]

Of these the chief are Sir Palomides or Palamedes (a gallant Saracen,

who is Tristram's unlucky rival for the affections of Iseult, while

his special task is the pursuit of the Questing Beast, a symbol of

Slander), and Tristram himself.

[Sidenote: _Sir Tristram._]

The appearance of this last personage in the Legend is one of the most

curious and interesting points in it. Although on this, as on every

one of such points, the widest diversity of opinion prevails, an

impartial examination of the texts perhaps enables us to obtain some

tolerably clear views on the subject--views which are helpful not

merely with reference to the "Tristan-saga" itself, but with reference

to the origins and character of the whole Legend.[54] There cannot, I

think, be a doubt that the Tristram story originally was quite

separate from that of Arthur. In the first place, Tristram has nothing

whatever to do with that patriotic and national resistance to the

Saxon invader which, though it died out in the later legend, was the

centre, and indeed almost reached the circumference, of the earlier.

In the second, except when he is directly brought to Arthur's court,

all Tristram's connections are with Cornwall, Brittany, Ireland, not

with that more integral and vaster part of _la bloie Bretagne_ which

extends from Somerset and Dorset to the Lothians. When he appears

abroad, it is as a Varangian at Constantinople, not in the train of

Arthur fighting against Romans. Again, the religious part of the

story, which is so important in the developed Arthurian Legend proper,

is almost entirely absent from the Tristram-tale, and the subject

which played the fourth part in mediæval affections and interests

with love, religion, and fighting--the chase--takes in the Tristram

romances the place of religion itself.

[Footnote 54: Editions: the French _Tristan_, edited long ago by F.

Michel, but in need of completion; the English _Sir Tristrem_ in

Scott's well-known issue, and re-edited (Heilbronn, 1882), with

excellent taste as well as learning, by Dr Kölbing, who has also given

the late Icelandic version, as well as for the Scottish Text Society

(Edinburgh, 1886) by Mr George P. McNeill; Gottfried of Strasburg's

German (_v._ chap. vi.), ed. Bechstein (Leipzig, 1890). _Romania_, v.

xv. (1886), contains several essays on the Tristram story.]

[Sidenote: _His story almost certainly Celtic._]

But the most interesting, though the most delicate, part of the

inquiry concerns the attitude of this episode or branch to love, and

the conclusion to be drawn as well from that attitude as from the

local peculiarities above noticed, as to the national origin of

Tristram on the one hand, and of the Arthur story on the other. It has

been said that Tristram's connections with what may be roughly called

Britain at large--_i.e._, the British Islands _plus_ Brittany--are,

except in his visits to Arthur's court, entirely with the Celtic

parts--Cornwall, Ireland, Armorica--less with Wales, which plays a

strangely small part in the Arthurian romances generally. This would

of itself give a fair presumption that the Tristram story is more

purely, or at any rate more directly, Celtic than the rest. But it so

happens that in the love of Tristram and Iseult, and the revenge and

general character of Mark, there is also a suffusion of colour and

tone which is distinctly Celtic. The more recent advocates for the

Celtic origin of romance in general, and the Arthurian legend in

particular, have relied very strongly upon the character of the love

adventures in these compositions as being different from those of

classical story, different from those of Frankish, Teutonic, and

Scandinavian romance; but, as it seems to them, like what has been

observed of the early native poetry of Wales, and still more (seeing

that the indisputable texts are older) of Ireland.

A discussion of this kind is perhaps more than any other _periculosæ

plenum opus aleæ_; but it is too important to be neglected. Taking the

character of the early Celtic, and especially the Irish, heroine as it

is given by her champions--a process which obviates all accusations of

misunderstanding that might be based on the present writer's

confession that of the Celtic texts alone he has to speak at

second-hand--it seems to me beyond question that both the Iseults,

Iseult of Ireland and Iseult of Brittany, approach much nearer to this

type than does Guinevere, or the Lady of the Lake, or the damsel

Lunete, or any of Arthur's sisters, even Morgane, or, to take earlier

examples, Igraine and Merlin's love. So too the peculiar spitefulness

of Mark, and his singular mixture of tolerance and murderous purpose

towards Tristram[55] are much more Celtic than Anglo-French: as indeed

is the curious absence of religiosity before noted, which extends to

Iseult as well as to Tristram. We have no trace in Mark's queen of the

fact or likelihood of any such final repentance as is shown by

Arthur's: and though the complete and headlong self-abandonment of

Iseult is excused to some extent by the magic potion, it is of an

"all-for-love-and-the-world-well-lost" kind which finds no exact

parallel elsewhere in the legend. So too, whether it seem more or less

amiable, the half-coquettish jealousy of Guinevere in regard to

Lancelot is not Celtic: while the profligate vindictiveness

attributed to her in _Sir Launfal_, and only in _Sir Launfal_, an

almost undoubtedly Celtic offshoot of the Arthurian Legend, is equally

alien from her character. We see Iseult planning the murder of

Brengwain with equal savagery and ingratitude, and we feel that it is

no libel. On the other hand, though Tristram's faithfulness is

proverbial, it is an entirely different kind of faithfulness from that

of Lancelot--flightier, more passionate perhaps in a way, but of a

less steady passion. Lancelot would never have married Iseult the

White-handed.

[Footnote 55: It is fair to say that Mark, like Gawain, appears to

have gone through a certain process of blackening at the hands of the

late romancers; but the earliest story invited this.]

It is, however, quite easy to understand how, this Tristram legend

existing by hypothesis already or being created at the same time, the

curious centripetal and agglutinative tendency of mediæval romance

should have brought it into connection with that of Arthur. The mere

fact of Mark's being a vassal-king of Greater Britain would have been

reason enough; but the parallel between the prowess of Lancelot and

Tristram, and between their loves for the two queens, was altogether

too tempting to be resisted. So Tristram makes his appearance in

Arthur's court, and as a knight of the Round Table, but as not exactly

at home there,--as a visitor, an "honorary member" rather than

otherwise, and only an occasional partaker of the home tournaments and

the adventures abroad which occupy Arthur's knights proper.

[Sidenote: _Sir Lancelot._]

The origin of the greatest of these, of Lancelot himself, is less

distinct. Since the audacious imaginativeness of the late M. de la

Villemarqué, which once, I am told, brought upon him the epithet

"_Faussaire!_" uttered in full conclave of Breton antiquaries, has

ceased to be taken seriously by Arthurian students, the old fancies

about some Breton "Ancel" or "Ancelot" have been quietly dropped. But

the Celticisers still cling fondly to the supposed possibility of

derivation from King Melvas, or King Maelgon, one or other of whom

does seem to have been connected, as above mentioned, by early Welsh

tradition with the abduction of the queen. It is, however, evident to

any reader of the _Charette_ episode, whether in the original French

prose and verse or in Malory, that Meleagraunce the ravisher and

Lancelot the avenger cannot have the same original. I should myself

suppose Lancelot to have been a directly and naturally spontaneous

literary growth. The necessity of a love-interest for the Arthurian

story being felt, and, according to the manner of the time, it being

felt with equal strength that the lover must not be the husband, it

was needful to look about for some one else. The merely business-like

self-surrender to Mordred as the king _de facto_, to the "lips that

were near," of Geoffrey's Guanhumara and Layamon's Wenhaver, was out

of the question; and the part of Gawain as a faithful nephew was too

well settled already by tradition for it to be possible to make him

the lover. Perhaps the great artistic stroke in the whole Legend, and

one of the greatest in all literature, is the concoction of a hero who

should be not only

"Like Paris handsome, and like Hector brave,"

but more heroic than Paris and more interesting than Hector,--not only

a "greatest knight," but at once the sinful lover of his queen and the

champion who should himself all but achieve, and in the person of his

son actually achieve, the sacred adventure of the Holy Graal. If, as

there seems no valid reason to disbelieve, the hitting upon this idea,

and the invention or adoption of Lancelot to carry it out, be the work

of Walter Mapes, then Walter Mapes is one of the great novelists of

the word, and one of the greatest of them. If it was some unknown

person (it could hardly be Chrestien, for in Chrestien's form the

Graal interest belongs to Percevale, not to Lancelot or Galahad), then

the same compliment must be paid to that person unknown. Meanwhile the

conception and execution of Lancelot, to whomsoever they may be due,

are things most happy. Entirely free from the faultlessness which is

the curse of the classical hero; his unequalled valour not seldom

rewarded only by reverses; his merits redeemed from mawkishness by his

one great fault, yet including all virtues that are themselves most

amiable, and deformed by no vice that is actually loathsome; the soul

of goodness in him always warring with his human frailty;--Sir

Lancelot fully deserves the noble funeral eulogy pronounced over his

grave, and felt by all the elect to be, in both senses, one of the

first of all extant pieces of perfect English prose.

[Sidenote: _The minor knights._]

But the virtues which are found in Lancelot eminently are found in all

but the "felon" knights, differing only in degree. It is true that the

later romances and compilations, feeling perhaps the necessity of

shade, extend to all the sons of Lot and Margause, except Gareth, and

to some extent Gawain, the unamiable character which Mordred enjoys

throughout, and which even in the _Merlin_ is found showing itself in

Agravaine. But Sir Lamoracke, their victim, is almost Lancelot's

equal: and the best of Lancelot's kin, especially Sir Bors, come not

far behind. It is entirely untrue that, as the easy epigram has it,

they all "hate their neighbour and love their neighbour's wife." On

the contrary, except in the bad subjects--ranging from the mere

ruffianism of Breuse-sans-Pitié to the misconduct of Meleagraunce--there

is no hatred of your neighbour anywhere. It is not hatred of your

neighbour to be prepared to take and give hard blows from and to him,

and to forgather in faith and friendship before and after. And as to

the other and more delicate point, a large majority of the knights can

at worst claim the benefit of the law laid down by a very pious but

indulgent mediæval writer,[56] who says that if men will only not

meddle with "spouse or sib" (married women or connections within the

prohibited degrees), it need be no such deadly matter.

[Footnote 56: _Cursor Mundi_, l. 2898.]

[Sidenote: _Arthur._]

It may be desirable, as it was in reference to Charlemagne, to say a

few words as to Arthur himself. In both cases there is noticeable

(though less in the case of Arthur than in that of Charlemagne) the

tendency _not_ to make the king blameless, or a paragon of prowess:

and in both cases, as we should expect, this tendency is even more

noticeable in the later versions than in the earlier. This may have

been partly due to the aristocratic spirit of at least idealised

feudalism, which gave the king no semi-divine character, but merely a

human primacy _inter pares_; partly also to the literary instinct of

the Middle Ages, which had discovered that the "biggest" personage of

a story is by no means that one who is most interesting. In Arthur's

very first literary appearance, the Nennius passage, his personal

prowess is specially dwelt upon: and in those parts of the _Merlin_

group which probably represent the first step from Geoffrey to the

complete legend, he slays Saxons and Romans, wrests the sword

single-handed from King Ryaunce, and so forth, as valiantly as Gawain

himself. It is, however, curious that at this time the writers are

much less careful than at a later to represent him as faithful to

Guinevere, and blameless before marriage, with the exception of the

early affair with Margause. He accepts the false Guinevere and the

Saxon enchantress very readily; and there is other scandal in which

the complaisant Merlin as usual figures. But in the accepted Arthuriad

(I do not of course speak of modern writers) this is rather kept in

the background, while his prowess is also less prominent, except in a

few cases, such as his great fight with his sister's lover, Sir

Accolon. Even here he never becomes the complaisant wittol, which late

and rather ignoble works like the _Cokwold's Daunce_[57] represent him

as being: and he never exhibits the slightest approach to the

outbursts of almost imbecile wrath which characterise Charlemagne.

[Footnote 57: Printed by Hartshorne, _Ancient Metrical Tales_ (London,

1829), p. 209; and Hazlitt, _Early Popular Poetry_ (London, 1864), i.

38.]

[Sidenote: _Guinevere._]

Something has been said of Guinevere already. It is perhaps hard to

look, as any English reader of our time must, backward through the

coloured window of the greatest of the _Idylls of the King_ without

our thoughts of the queen being somewhat affected by it. But those who

knew their Malory before the _Idylls_ appeared escape that danger. Mr

Morris's Guinevere in her _Defence_ is perhaps a little truer than

Lord Tennyson's to the original conception--indeed, much of the

delightful volume in which she first appeared is pure _Extrait

Arthurien_. But the Tennysonian glosses on Guinevere's character are

not ill justified: though perhaps, if less magnificent, it would have

been truer, both to the story and to human nature, to attribute her

fall rather to the knowledge that Arthur himself was by no means

immaculate than to a despairing sense of his immaculateness. The

Guinevere of the original romances is the first perfectly human woman

in English literature. They have ennobled her unfaithfulness to Arthur

by her constancy to Lancelot, they have saved her constancy to

Lancelot from being insipid by interspersing the gusts of jealousy in

the matter of the two Elaines which play so great a part in the story.

And it is curious that, coarse as both the manners and the speech of

the Middle Ages are supposed to have been, the majority of these

romances are curiously free from coarseness. The ideas might shock

Ascham's prudery, but the expression is, with the rarest exceptions,

scrupulously adapted to polite society. There are one or two coarse

passages in the _Merlin_ and the older _Saint Graal_, and I remember

others in outside branches like the _Chevalier as Deux Espées_. But

though a French critic has detected something shocking in _Le

Chevalier à la Charette_, it requires curious consideration to follow

him.

[Sidenote: _The Graal._]

The part which the Holy Graal plays in the legend generally is not the

least curious or interesting feature of the whole. As has been already

said more than once, it makes no figure at all in the earliest

versions: and it is consistent with this, as well as with the general

theory and procedure of romance, that when it does appear the

development of the part played by it is conducted on two more or less

independent lines, which, however, the later compilers at least do not

seem to think mutually exclusive. With the usual reserves as to the

impossibility of pronouncing with certainty on the exact order of the

additions to this wonderful structure of legend, it may be said to be

probable, on all available considerations of literary probability,

that of the two versions of the Graal story--that in which Percival is

the hero of the Quest, and that in which Galahad occupies that

place--the former is the earlier. According to this, which commended

itself especially to the French and German handlers of the story,[58]

the Graal Quest lies very much outside the more intimate concerns of

the Arthurian court and the realm of Britain. Indeed, in the latest

and perhaps greatest of this school, Wolfram von Eschenbach (_v._

chap. vi.), the story wanders off into uttermost isles of fancy, quite

remote from the proper Arthurian centres. It may perhaps be conceded

that this development is in more strict accordance with what we may

suppose and can partly perceive to have been the original and almost

purely mystical conception of the Graal as entertained by Robert de

Borron, or another--the conception in which all earthly, even wedded,

love is of the nature of sin, and according to which the perfect

knight is only an armed monk, converting the heathen and resisting the

temptations of the devil, the world, and more particularly the flesh;

diversifying his wars and preachings only or mainly by long mystical

visions of sacred history as it presented itself to mediæval

imagination. It is true that the genius of Wolfram has not a little

coloured and warmed this chilly ideal: but the story is still

conducted rather afar from general human interest, and very far off

indeed from the special interests of Arthur.

[Footnote 58: And contrariwise the Welsh _Peredur_ (_Mabinogion_, _ed.

cit._, 81) has only a possible allusion to the Graal story, while the

English _Sir Percivale_ (_Thornton Romances_, ed. Halliwell, Camden

Society, 1844) omits even this.]

[Sidenote: _How it perfects the story._]

Another genius, that of Walter Map (by hypothesis, as before),

described and worked out different capabilities in the story. By the

idea, simple, like most ideas of genius, of making Lancelot, the

father, at once the greatest knight of the Arimathean lineage, and

unable perfectly to achieve the Quest by reason of his sin, and

Galahad the son, inheritor of his prowess but not of his weakness, he

has at once secured the success of the Quest in sufficient accordance

with the original idea and the presence of abundant purely romantic

interest as well. And at the same time by connecting the sin which

disqualifies Lancelot with the catastrophe of Arthur, and the

achieving of the Quest itself with the weakening and breaking up of

the Round Table (an idea insisted upon no doubt, by Tennyson, but

existent in the originals), a dramatic and romantic completeness has

been given to the whole cycle which no other collection of mediæval

romances possesses, and which equals, if it does not exceed, that of

any of the far more apparently regular epics of literary history. It

appears, indeed, to have been left for Malory to adjust and bring out

the full epic completeness of the legend: but the materials, as it was

almost superfluous for Dr Sommer to show by chapter and verse, were

all ready to his hand. And if (as that learned if not invariably

judicious scholar thinks) there is or once was somewhere a _Suite_ of

Lancelot corresponding to the _Suite de Merlin_ of which Sir Thomas

made such good use, it is not improbable that we should find the

adjustment, though not the expression, to some extent anticipated.

[Sidenote: _Nature of this perfection._]

At any rate, the idea is already to hand in the original romances of

our present period; and a wonderfully great and perfect idea it is.

Not the much and justly praised arrangement and poetical justice of

the Oresteia or of the story of Oedipus excel the Arthuriad in what

used to be called "propriety" (which has nothing to do with

prudishness), while both are, as at least it seems to me, far

inferior in varied and poignant interest. That the attainment of the

Graal, the healing of the maimed king, and the fulfilling of the other

"weirds" which have lain upon the race of Joseph, should practically

coincide with the termination of that glorious reign, with which fate

and metaphysical aid had connected them, is one felicity. The

"dolorous death and departing out of this world" in Lyonnesse and

elsewhere corresponds to and completes the triumph of Sarras. From yet

another point of view, the bringing into judgment of all the

characters and their deeds is equally complete, equally natural and

unforced. It is astonishing that men like Ascham,[59] unless blinded

by a survival of mediæval or a foreshadowing of Puritan prudery,

should have failed to see that the morality of the _Morte d'Arthur_ is

as rigorous as it is unsqueamish. Guinevere in her cloister and

Lancelot in his hermitage, Arthur falling by (or at any rate in battle

against) the fruit of his incestuous intercourse--these are not

exactly encouragements to vice: while at the same time the earlier

history may be admitted to have nothing of a crabbed and jejune

virtue.

[Footnote 59: This curious outburst, referred to before, may be found

in the _Schoolmaster_, ed. Arber, p. 80, or ed. Giles, _Works of

Ascham_, iii. 159.]

But this conclusion, with the minor events which lead up to it, is

scarcely less remarkable as exhibiting in the original author, whoever

he was, a sense of art, a sense of finality, the absence of which is

the great blot on Romance at large, owing to the natural, the human,

but the very inartistic, craving for sequels. As is well known, it was

the most difficult thing in the world for a mediæval romancer to let

his subject go. He must needs take it up from generation to

generation; and the interminable series of Amadis and Esplandian

stories, which, as the last example, looks almost like a designed

caricature, is only an exaggeration of the habit which we can trace

back through _Huon of Bordeaux_ and _Guy of Warwick_ almost to the

earliest _chansons de geste_.

[Sidenote: _No sequel possible._]

But the intelligent genius who shaped the Arthuriad has escaped this

danger, and that not merely by the simple process which Dryden, with

his placid irony, somewhere describes as "leaving scarce three of the

characters alive." We have reached, and feel that we have reached, the

conclusion of the whole matter when the Graal has been taken to

Heaven, and Arthur has gone to Avalon. Nobody wants to hear anything

of the doubtless excellent Duke and King Constantine. Sir Ector

himself could not leave the stage with more grace than with his great

discourse on his dead comrade and kinsman. Lancelot's only son has

gone with the Graal. The end is not violent or factitious, it is

necessary and inevitable. It were even less unwise to seek the grave

of Arthur than to attempt to take up the story of the Arthurians after

king and queen and Lancelot are gone each to his and her own place,

after the Graal is attained, after the Round Table is dissolved.

It is creditable to the intelligence and taste of the average mediæval

romance-writer that even he did not yield to his besetting sin in this

particular instance. With the exception of _Ysaie le Triste_, which

deals with the fortunes of a supposed son of Tristan and Yseult, and

thus connects itself with the most outlying part of the legend--a part

which, as has been shown, is only hinged on to it--I cannot remember a

single romance which purports to deal with affairs subsequent to the

battle in Lyonesse. The two latest that can be in any way regarded as

Arthurian, _Arthur of Little Britain_ and _Cleriodus_, avowedly take

up the story long subsequently, and only claim for their heroes the

glory of distant descent from Arthur and his heroes. _Meliadus de

Lyonnois_ ascends from Tristram, and endeavours to connect the matter

of Britain with that of France. _Giron le Courtois_ deals with

Palamedes and the earlier Arthurian story; while _Perceforest_, though

based on the _Brut_, selects periods anterior to Arthur.[60]

[Footnote 60: I have a much less direct acquaintance with the romances

mentioned in this paragraph than with most of the works referred to in

this book. I am obliged to speak of them at second-hand (chiefly from

Dunlop and Mr Ward's invaluable _Catalogue of Romances_, vol. i. 1883;

vol. ii. 1893). It is one of the results of the unlucky fancy of

scholars for re-editing already accessible texts instead of devoting

themselves to _anecdota_, that work of the first interest, like

_Perceforest_, for instance, is left to black-letter, which, not to

mention its costliness, is impossible to weak eyes; even where it is

not left to manuscript, which is more impossible still.]

[Sidenote: _Latin episodes._]

There was, however, no such artistic constraint as regards episodes of

the main story, or _romans d'aventures_ celebrating the exploits of

single knights, and connected with that story by a sort of stock

overture and _dénoûment_, in the first of which an adventure is

usually started at Arthur's court, while the successful knight is also

accustomed to send his captives to give testimony to his prowess in

the same place. As has been said above,[61] there is a whole cluster

of such episodes--most, it would seem, owing their origin to England

or Scotland--which have Sir Gawain for their chief hero, and which, at

least in such forms as survive, would appear to be later than the

great central romances which have been just noticed. Some of these are

of much local interest--there being a Scottish group, a group which

seems to centre about Cumbria, and so forth--but they fall rather to

the portion of my successor in this series, who will take as his

province _Gawaine and the Green Knight_, _Lancelot of the Laik_, the

quaint alliterative Thornton _Morte Arthur_, and not a few others. The

most interesting of all is that hitherto untraced romance of Beaumains

or Gareth (he, as Gawain's brother, brings the thing into the class

referred to), of which Malory has made an entire book, and which is

one of the most completely and perfectly turned-out episodes existing.

It has points in common with _Yvain_,[62] and others in common with

_Ipomydon_,[63] but at the same time quite enough of its own. But we

have no French text for it. On the other hand, we have long verse

romances like _Durmart le Gallois_[64] (which both from the title and

from certain mystical Graal passages rather connects itself with the

Percevale sub-section); and the _Chevalier as Deux Espées_,[65] which

belongs to the Gawain class. But all these, as well as the German

romances to be noticed in chap. vi., distinguish themselves from the

main stories analysed above not merely by their obvious and almost

avowed dependence, but by a family likeness in incident, turn, and

phrase from which those main stories are free. In fact the general

fault of the _Romans d'Aventures_ is that neither the unsophisticated

freshness of the _chanson de geste_, nor the variety and commanding

breadth of the Arthurian legend, appears in them to the full. The kind

of "balaam," the stock repetitions and expletives at which Chaucer

laughs in "Sir Thopas"--a laugh which has been rather unjustly

received as condemning the whole class of English romances--is very

evident even in the French texts. We have left the great and gracious

ways, the inspiring central ideas, of the larger romance.

[Footnote 61: See pp. 114, 115 note.]

[Footnote 62: See above, p. 102.]

[Footnote 63: Ed. Weber, _Metrical Romances_, Edinburgh, 1810, ii.

279.]

[Footnote 64: Ed. Stengel. Tübingen, 1873.]

[Footnote 65: Ed. Förster. Halle, 1877.]

[Sidenote: _The legend as a whole._]

It may perhaps seem to some readers that too much praise has been

given to that romance itself. Far as we are, not merely from Ascham's

days, but from those in which the excellent Dunlop was bound to

confess that "they [the romances of the Round Table] will be found

extremely defective in those points which have been laid down as

constituting excellence in fictitious narrative," that they are

"improbable," full of "glaring anachronisms and geographical

blunders," "not well shaded and distinguished in character,"

possessing heroines such as "the mistresses of Tristan and Lancelot"

[may God assoil Dunlop!] who are "women of abandoned character,"

"highly reprehensible in their moral tendency," "equalled by the most

insipid romance of the present day as a fund of amusement." In those

days even Scott thought it prudent to limit his praise of Malory's

book to the statement that "it is written in pure old English, and

many of the wild adventures which it contains are told with a

simplicity bordering on the sublime." Of Malory--thanks to the charms

of his own book in the editions of Southey, of the two editors in

12mo, of Wright and of Sir Edward Strachey, not to mention the recent

and stately issues given by Dr Sommer and Professor Rhys--a better

idea has long prevailed, though there are some gainsayers. But of the

originals, and of the Legend as a whole, the knowledge is too much

limited to those who see in that legend only an opportunity for

discussing texts and dates, origins and national claims. Its

extraordinary beauty, and the genius which at some time or other, in

one brain or in many, developed it from the extremely meagre materials

which are all that can be certainly traced, too often escape attention

altogether, and have hardly, I think, in a single instance obtained

full recognition.

[Sidenote: _The theories of its origin._]

Yet however exaggerated the attention to the _Quellen_ may have been,

however inadequate the attention to the actual literary result, it

would be a failure in duty towards the reader, and disrespectful to

those scholars who, if not always in the most excellent way, have

contributed vastly to our knowledge of the subject, to finish this

chapter without giving something on the question of origins itself. I

shall therefore conclude it with a brief sketch of the chief opinions

on the subject, and with an indication of those to which many years'

reading have inclined myself.

The theories, not to give them one by one as set forth by individual

writers, are in the main as follows:--

[Sidenote: _Celtic._]

I. That the Legend is, not merely in its first inception, but in main

bulk, Celtic, either (_a_) Welsh or (_b_) Armorican.

[Sidenote: _French._]

II. That it is, except in the mere names and the vaguest outline,

French.

[Sidenote: _English._]

III. That it is English, or at least Anglo-Norman.

[Sidenote: _Literary._]

IV. That it is very mainly a "literary" growth, owing something to the

Greek romances, and not to be regarded without error as a new

development unconnected, or almost unconnected, with traditional

sources of any kind.

[Sidenote: _The Celtic theory._]

The first explanation is the oldest. After being for nearly half a

century discredited, it has again found ardent defenders, and it may

seem at first sight to be the most natural and reasonable. Arthur, if

he existed at all, was undoubtedly a British hero; the British Celts,

especially the Welsh, possess beyond all question strong literary

affinities and a great literary performance, and Geoffrey of Monmouth,

the father of the whole story, expressly declares that he took it from

a book written in the British tongue. It was natural that in

comparatively uncritical ages no quarrel should be made with this

account. There were, even up to the last century, I believe,

enthusiastic antiquaries who affirmed, and perhaps believed, that

they had come across the very documents to which Geoffrey refers, or

at worst later Welsh transcripts of them. But when the study of the

matter grew, and especially when Welsh literature itself began to be

critically examined, uncomfortable doubts began to arise. It was found

impossible to assign to the existing Welsh romances on the subject,

such as those published in the _Mabinogion_, a date even approaching

in antiquity that which can certainly be claimed by the oldest French

texts: and in more than one case the Welsh bore unmistakable

indications of having been directly imitated from the French itself.

Further, in undoubtedly old Welsh literature, though there were (_v.

supra_) references to Arthur, they were few, they were very meagre,

and except as regards the mystery of his final disappearance rather

than death, they had little if anything to do with the received

Arthurian story. On the other hand, as far as Brittany was concerned,

after a period of confident assertion, and of attempts, in at least

doubtful honesty, to supply what could not be found, it had to be

acknowledged that Brittany could supply no ancient texts whatever, and

hardly any ancient tradition. These facts, when once established (and

they have never since been denied by competent criticism), staggered

the Celtic claim very seriously. Of late years, however, it has found

advocates (who, as usual, adopt arguments rather mutually destructive

than mutually confirmatory) both in France (M. Gaston Paris) and in

Germany (Herr Zimmer), while it has been passionately defended in

England by Mr Nutt, and with a more cautious, but perhaps at least

equally firm, support by Professor Rhys. As has been said, these

Neo-Celticists do not, when they are wise, attempt to revive the older

form of the claims. They rest theirs on the scattered references in

undoubtedly old Welsh literature above referred to, on the place-names

which play such an undoubtedly remarkable part in the local

nomenclature of the West-Welsh border in the south-west of England and

in Cornwall, of Wales less frequently, of Strathclyde and Lothian

eminently, and not at all, or hardly at all, of that portion of

England which was early and thoroughly subjected to Saxon and Angle

sway. And the bolder of them, taking advantage of the admitted

superiority in age of Irish to Welsh literature as far as texts go,

have had recourse to this, not for direct originals (it is admitted

that there are none, even of parts of the Legend such as those

relating to Tristram and Iseult, which are not only avowedly Irish in

place but Irish in tone), but for evidences of differential origin in

comparison with classical and Teutonic literature. Unfortunately this

last point is one not of technical "scholarship," but of general

literary criticism, and it is certain that the Celticists have not

converted all or most students in that subject to their view. I should

myself give my opinion, for whatever it may be worth, to the effect

that the tone and tendency of the Celtic, and especially the Irish,

literature of very early days, as declared by its own modern

champions, are quite different from those of the romances in general

and the Arthurian Legend in particular. Again, though the other two

classes of evidence cannot be so ruled out of court as a whole, it

must be evident that they go but a very little way, and are asked to

go much further. If any one will consult Professor Rhys's careful

though most friendly abstract of the testimony of early Welsh

literature, he will see how very great the interval is. When we are

asked to accept a magic caldron which fed people at discretion as the

special original of the Holy Grail, the experienced critic knows the

state of the case pretty well.[66] While as to the place-names, though

they give undoubted and valuable support of a kind to the historical

existence of Arthur, and support still more valuable to the theory of

the early and wide distribution of legends respecting him, it is

noticeable that they have hardly anything to do with _our_ Arthurian

Legend at all. They concern--as indeed we should expect--the fights

with the Saxons, and some of them reflect (very vaguely and thinly) a

tradition of conjugal difficulties between Arthur and his queen. But

unfortunately these last are not confined to Arthurian experience;

and, as we have seen, Arthur's fights with the Saxons, except the last

when they joined Mordred, are of ever-dwindling importance for the

Romance.

[Footnote 66: For these magical provisions of food are commonplaces of

general popular belief, and, as readers of Major Wingate's book on the

Soudan will remember, it was within the last few years an article of

faith there that one of the original Mahdi's rivals had a magic tent

which would supply rations for an army.]

[Sidenote: _The French claims._]

Like the Celtic theory, the French has an engaging appearance of

justice and probability, and it has over the Celtic the overwhelming

advantage as regards texts. That all, without exception, of the

oldest texts in which the complete romantic story of Arthur appears

are in the French language is a fact entirely indisputable, and at

first blench conclusive. We may even put it more strongly still and

say that, taking positive evidence as apart from mere assertion (as in

the case of the Latin Graal-book), there is nothing to show that any

part of the full romantic story of Arthur, as distinguished from the

meagre quasi-historical outline of Geoffrey, ever appeared in any

language before it appeared in French. The most certain of the three

personal claimants for the origination of these early texts, Chrestien

de Troyes, was undoubtedly a Frenchman in the wide sense; so (if he

existed) was Robert de Borron, another of them. The very phrase so

familiar to readers of Malory, "the French book," comes to the

assistance of the claim.

And yet, as is the case with some other claims which look irresistible

at first sight, the strength of this shrinks and dwindles remarkably

when it comes to be examined. One consideration is by itself

sufficient, not indeed totally to destroy it, but to make a terrible

abatement in its cogency; and this is, that if the great Arthurian

romances, written between the middle and end of the twelfth century,

were written in French, it was chiefly because they could not have

been written in any other tongue. Not only was no other language

generally intelligible to that public of knights and ladies to which

they were addressed; not only was no other vernacular language

generally known to European men of letters, but no such vernacular,

except Provençal, had attained to anything like the perfection

necessary to make it a convenient vehicle. Whatever the nationality of

the writer or writers, it was more likely that he or they would write

in French than in any other language. And as a matter of fact we see

that the third of the great national claimants was an Englishman,

while it is not certain that Robert de Borron was not an English

subject. Nor is it yet formally determined whether Chrestien himself,

in those parts of his work which are specially Arthurian, had not Map

or some one else before him as an authority.

[Sidenote: _The theory of general literary growth._]

The last theory, that the Legend may be almost if not quite

sufficiently accounted for as a legitimate descendant of previous

literature, classical and other (including Oriental sources), has been

the least general favourite. As originally started, or at least

introduced into English literary history, by Warton, it suffered

rather unfairly from some defects of its author. Warton's _History of

English Poetry_ marks, and to some extent helped to produce, an

immense change for the better in the study of English literature: and

he deserved the contemptuous remarks of some later critics as little

as he did the savage attacks of the half-lunatic Ritson. But he was

rather indolent; his knowledge, though wide, was very desultory and

full of scraps and gaps; and, like others in his century, he was much

too fond of hypothesis without hypostasis, of supposition without

substance. He was very excusably but very unluckily ignorant of what

may be called the comparative panorama of English and European

literature during the Middle Ages, and was apt to assign to direct

borrowing or imitation those fresh workings up of the eternal

_données_ of all literary art which presented themselves. As the

theory has been more recently presented with far exacter learning and

greater judgment by his successor, Mr Courthope,[67] it is much

relieved from most of its disabilities. I have myself no doubt that

the Greek romances (see chap. ix.) _do_ represent at the least a stage

directly connecting classical with romantic literature; and that the

later of them (which, it must be remembered, were composed in this

very twelfth century, and must have come under the notice of the

crusaders), _may_ have exercised a direct effect upon mediæval Romance

proper. I formed this opinion more than twenty years ago, when I first

read _Hysminias and Hysmine_; and I have never seen reason to change

it since. But these influences, though not to be left out of the

question, are perhaps in one respect too general, and in another too

partial, to explain the precise matter. That the Arthurian Romances,

in common with all the romances, and with mediæval literature

generally, were much more influenced by the traditional classical

culture than used at one time to be thought, I have believed ever

since I began to study the subject, and am more and more convinced of

it. The classics both of Europe and the East played a part, and no

small part, in bringing about the new literature; but it was only a

part.

[Footnote 67: In his _History of English Poetry_, vol. i., London,

1895, and in a subsequent controversy with Mr Nutt, which was carried

on in the _Athenæum_.]

[Sidenote: _The English or Anglo-Norman pretensions._]

If, as I think may fairly be done, the glory of the Legend be chiefly

claimed for none of these, but for English or Anglo-Norman, it can be

done in no spirit of national _pleonexia_, but on a sober

consideration of all the facts of the case, and allowing all other

claimants their fair share in the matter as subsidiaries. From the

merely _a priori_ point of view the claims of England--that is to say,

the Anglo-Norman realm--are strong. The matter is "the matter of

Britain," and it was as natural that Arthur should be sung in Britain

as that Charlemagne should be celebrated in France. But this could

weigh nothing against positive balance of argument from the facts on

the other side. The balance, however, does not lie against us. The

personal claim of Walter Map, even if disproved, would not carry the

English claim with it in its fall. But it has never been disproved.

The positive, the repeated, attribution of the MSS. may not be final,

but requires a very serious body of counter-argument to upset it. And

there is none such. The time suits; the man's general ability is not

denied; his familiarity with Welshmen and Welsh tradition as a

Herefordshire Marcher is pretty certain; and his one indisputable book

of general literature, the _De Nugis Curialium_, exhibits

many--perhaps all--of the qualifications required: a sharp judgment

united with a distinct predilection for the marvellous, an

unquestionable piety combined with man-of-the-worldliness, and a

toleration of human infirmities. It is hardly necessary to point out

the critical incompetence of those who say that a satirist like Map

could not have written the _Quest_ and the _Mort_. Such critics would

make two Peacocks as the simultaneous authors of _Nightmare Abbey_ and

_Rhododaphne_--nay, two Shakespeares to father the _Sonnets_ and the

_Merry Wives_. If any one will turn to the stories of Gerbert and

Meridiana, of Galo, Sadius, and the evil queen in the _Nugæ_, he will,

making allowance for Walter's awkward Latin in comparison with the

exquisite French of the twelfth century, find reasons for thinking the

author of that odd book quite equal to the authorship of part--not

necessarily the whole--of the Arthurian story in its co-ordinated

form.

Again, it is distinctly noticeable that the farther the story goes

from England and the English Continental possessions, the more does it

lose of that peculiar blended character, that mixture of the purely

mystical and purely romantic, of sacred and profane, which has been

noted as characteristic of its perfect bloom. In the _Percevale_ of

Chrestien and his continuators, and still more in Wolfram von

Eschenbach, as it proceeds eastwards, and into more and more purely

Teutonic regions, it absorbs itself in the _Graal_ and the moonshiny

mysticism thereto appertaining. When it has fared southwards to Italy,

the lawlessness of the loves of Guinevere and Iseult preoccupies

Southern attention. As for Welsh, it is sufficient to quote the

statement of the most competent of Welsh authorities, Professor Rhys,

to the effect that "the passion of Lancelot for Guinevere is unknown

to Welsh literature." Now, as I have tried to point out, the passion

of Lancelot for Guinevere, blended as it is with the quasi-historic

interest of Arthur's conquests and the religious-mystical interest of

the Graal story, is the heart, the life, the source of all charm and

beauty in the perfect Arthur-story.

I should think, therefore, that the most reasonable account of the

whole matter may be somewhat as follows, using imagination as little

as possible, and limiting hypothesis rigidly to what is necessary to

connect, explain, and render generally intelligible the historical

facts which have been already summarised. And I may add that while

this account is not very different from the views of the earliest of

really learned modern authorities, Sir Frederic Madden and M. Paulin

Paris, I was surprised to find how much it agrees with that of one of

the very latest, M. Loth.

[Sidenote: _Attempted hypothesis._]

In so far as the probable personality and exploits, and the almost

certain tradition of such exploits and such a personality, goes, there

is no reason for, and much reason against, denying a Celtic origin to

this Legend of Arthur. The best authorities have differed as to the

amount of really ancient testimony in Welsh as to him, and it seems to

be agreed by the best authorities that there is no ancient tradition

in any other branch of Celtic literature. But if we take the mentions

allowed as ancient by such a careful critic as Professor Rhys, if we

combine them with the place-name evidence, and if we add the really

important fact, that of the earliest literary dealers, certain or

probable, with the legend, Geoffrey, Layamon, and Walter Map were

neighbours of Wales, and Wace a neighbour of Brittany, to suppose that

Arthur as a subject for romantic treatment was a figment of some

non-Celtic brain, Saxon or Norman, French or English, is not only

gratuitous but excessively unreasonable. Again, there can be no

reasonable doubt that the Merlin legends, in at least their inception,

were Celtic likewise. The attempt once made to identify Merlin with

the well-known "Marcolf," who serves as Solomon's interlocutor in a

mass of early literature more or less Eastern in origin, is one of

those critical freaks which betray an utterly uncritical temperament.

Yet further, I should be inclined to allow no small portion of Celtic

ingredient in the spirit, the tendency, the essence of the Arthurian

Legend. We want something to account for this, which is not Saxon, not

Norman, not French, not Teutonic generally, not Latin, not Eastern;

and I at least am unable to discover where this something comes from

if it is not from the Celtic fringe of England and of Normandy.

But when we come to the Legend proper, and to its most important and

most interesting characteristics, to its working up, to that

extraordinary development which in a bare half-century (and half a

century, though a long time now, was a very short one seven hundred

years ago) evolved almost a whole library of romance from the scanty

_faits et gestes_ of Arthur as given by Geoffrey,--then I must confess

that I can see no evidence of Celtic forces or sources having played

any great part in the matter. If Caradoc of Lancarvan wrote the _Vita

Gildæ_--and it is pretty certainly not later than his day, while if it

was not written by him it must have been written by some one equally

well acquainted with traditions, British and Armorican, of St

Gildas--if he or any one else gave us what he has given about Arthur

and Gildas himself, about Arthur's wife and Melvas, and if traditions

existed of Galahad or even Percivale and the Graal, of the Round

Table, most of all of Lancelot,--why in the name of all that is

critical and probable did he not give us more? His hero could not have

been ignorant of the matter, the legends of his hero could hardly have

been silent about them. It is hard to believe that anybody can read

the famous conclusion of Geoffrey's history without seeing a

deliberate impishness in it, without being certain that the tale of

the Book and the Archdeacon is a tale of a Cock and a Bull. But if it

be taken seriously, how could the "British book" have failed to

contain something more like our Legend of Arthur than Geoffrey has

given us, and how, if it existed and gave more, could Geoffrey have

failed to impart it? Why should the Welsh, the proudest in their way

of all peoples, and not the least gifted in literature, when they came

to give Arthurian legends of the kind which we recognise, either

translate them from the French or at least adapt and adjust them

thereto?

On the other hand, the supposition that the fashioning, partly out of

vague tradition, partly it may be out of more definite Celtic tales

like that of Tristram, partly from classical, Eastern, and other

sources, belongs to the English in the wide sense--that is to say, the

nation or nations partly under English rule proper, partly under

Scottish, partly under that of the feudatories or allies of the

English kings as Dukes of Normandy--has to support it not merely the

arguments stated above as to the concentration of the legend proper

between Troyes and Herefordshire, between Broceliande and Northumbria,

as to MS. authority, as to the inveteracy of the legend in

English,--not only those negative ones as to the certainty that if it

were written by Englishmen it would be written in French,--but

another, which to the comparative student of literary history may seem

strongest of all.

Here first, here eminently, and here just at the time when we should

expect it, do we see that strange faculty for exhibiting a blend, a

union, a cross of characteristics diverse in themselves, and giving

when blended a result different from any of the parts, which is more

than anything else the characteristic of the English language, of

English literature, of English politics, of everything that is

English. Classical rhetoric, French gallantry, Saxon religiosity and

intense realisation of the other world, Oriental extravagance to some

extent, the "Celtic vague"--all these things are there. But they are

all co-ordinated, dominated, fashioned anew by some thing which is

none of them, but which is the English genius, that curious,

anomalous, many-sided genius, which to those who look at only one side

of it seems insular, provincial, limited, and which yet has given us

Shakespeare, the one writer of the world to whom the world allows an

absolute universality.