CHAPTER II

THE MATTERS OF FRANCE, ROME, AND BRITAIN

It has been said already that the Saint's Life, as it seems most

probable to the present writer, started the romance in France; but of

course we must allow considerable reinforcement of one kind or another

from local, traditional, and literary sources. The time-honoured

distribution, also given already, of the "matter" of this romance does

not concern us so much here as it would in a history of French

literature, but it concerns us. We shall indeed probably find that the

home-grown or home-fed _Chanson de Geste_ did least for the novel in the

wide sense--that the "Matter of Rome" chiefly gave it variety, change of

atmosphere to some extent, and an invaluable connection with older

literatures, but that the central division or "Matter of Britain," with

the immense fringes of miscellaneous _romans d'aventures_--which are

sometimes more or less directly connected with it, and are always

moulded more or less on its patterns--gave most of all.

[Sidenote: The _Chanson de Geste_.]

Of these, however, what has been called the family or patriotic part was

undoubtedly the earliest and for a long time the most influential. There

is, fortunately, not the least need here to fight out the old battle of

the _cantilenae_ or supposed _ballad_-originals. I see no reason to

alter the doubt with which I have always regarded their existence; but

it really does not matter, _to us_, whether they existed or not,

especially since we have not got them now. What we have got is a vast

mass of narrative poetry, which latterly took actual prose form, and

which--as early certainly as the eleventh century and perhaps

earlier--turns the French faculty for narrative (whether it was actually

or entirely fictitious narrative or not does not again matter) into

channels of a very promising kind.

The novel-reader who has his wits and his memory about him may perhaps

say, "Promising perhaps; but paying?" The answer must be that the

promise may have taken some time to be fully liquidated, but that the

immediate or short-dated payment was great. The fault of the _Chansons

de Geste_--a fault which in some degree is to be found in French

literature as a whole, and to a greater extent in all mediaeval

literature--is that the class and the type are rather too prominent. The

central conception of Charlemagne as a generally dignified but too

frequently irascible and rather petulant monarch, surrounded by valiant

and in a way faithful but exceedingly touchy or ticklish paladins, is no

doubt true enough to the early stages of feudalism--in fact, to adapt

the tag, there is too much human nature in it for it to be false. But it

communicates a certain sameness to the chansons which stick closest to

the model.

[Sidenote: The proportions of history and fiction in them.]

The exact relation of the _Chansons de Geste_ to the subsequent history

of French fiction is thus an extremely important one, and one that

requires, not only a good deal of reading on which to base any opinion

that shall not be worthless, but a considerable exercise of critical

discretion in order to form that opinion competently. The present writer

can at least plead no small acquaintance with the subject, and a full if

possibly over-generous acknowledgment of his dealings with it on the

part of some French authorities, living and dead, of the highest

competence. But the attractions of the vast and strangely long ignored

body of _chanson_ literature are curiously various in kind, and they

cannot be indiscriminately drawn upon as evidence of an early mastery of

tale-telling proper on the part of the French as a nation.

There is indeed one solid fact, the importance of which can hardly be

exaggerated in some ways, though it may be wrongly estimated in others.

Here is not merely the largest part proportionately, but a very large

bulk positively, of the very earliest part of a literature, devoted to a

kind of narrative which, though some of it may be historic originally,

is pretty certainly worked up into its concrete and extant state by

fiction. The comparison with the two literatures which on the whole bear

such comparison with French best--English and Greek--is here very

striking. People say that there "must have been" many _Beowulfs_: it can

hardly be said that we have so much as a positive assertion of the

existence of even one other, though we have allusions and glances which

have been amplified in the usual fashion. We have positive and not

reasonably doubtful assertion of the existence of a very large body of

more or less early Greek epic; but we have nothing existing except the

_Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_.

[Sidenote: The part played by language, prosody, and manners.]

On this fact, be it repeated, if we observe the canons of sound

criticism in the process, too much stress in general cannot be laid.

There must have been some more than ordinary _nisus_ towards

story-telling in a people and a language which produced, and for three

or four centuries cherished, something like a hundred legends, sometimes

of great length, on the single general[14] subject of the exploits,

sufferings, and what not of the great half-historical, half-legendary

emperor _a la barbe florie_, of his son, and of the more legendary than

historical peers, rebels, subjects, descendants, and "those about both"

generally. And though the assertion requires a little more justification

and allowance, there must have been some extraordinary gifts for more or

less fictitious composition when such a vast body of spirited

fictitious, or even half-fictitious, narrative is turned out.

But in this justification as to the last part of the contention a good

deal of care has to be observed. It will not necessarily follow, because

the metal is attractive, that its attractiveness is always of the kind

purely belonging to fiction; and, as a matter of fact, a large part of

it is not. Much is due to the singular sonority and splendour of the

language, which is much more like Spanish than modern French, and which

only a few poets of exceptional power have been able to reproduce in

modern French itself. Much more is imparted by the equally peculiar

character of the metre--the long _tirades_ or _laisses_, assonanced or

mono-rhymed paragraphs in decasyllables or alexandrines, which, to those

who have once caught their harmony, have an indescribable and

unparalleled charm. Yet further, these attractions come from the strange

unfamiliar world of life and character described and displayed; from the

brilliant stock epithets and phrases that stud the style as if with a

stiff but glittering embroidery; and from other sources too many to

mention here.

[Sidenote: Some drawbacks.]

Yet one must draw attention to the fact that all the named sources of

the attraction, and may perhaps ask the reader to take it on trust that

most of the unnamed, are not essentially or exclusively attractions of

fiction--that they are attractions of poetry. And, on the other hand,

while the weaving of so vast a web of actual fiction remains "to

credit," there are not a few things to be set on the other side of the

account. The sameness of the _chanson_ story, the almost invariable

recurrence of the stock motives and frameworks--of rebellion, treason,

paynim invasion, petulance of a King's son, somewhat too "coming"

affection of a King's daughter, tyrannical and Lear-like _impotentia_ of

the King himself, etc.--may be exaggerated, but cannot be denied. In the

greatest of all by general acknowledgment, the far-famed _Roland_, the

economy of pure story interest is pushed to a point which in a less

unsophisticated age--say the twentieth instead of the twelfth or

eleventh century--might be put down to deliberate theory or crotchet.

The very incidents, stirring as they are, are put as it were in

skeleton argument or summary rather than amplified into full story-flesh

and blood; we see such heroine as there is only to see her die; even the

great moment of the horn is given as if it had been "censored" by

somebody. People, I believe, have called this brevity Homeric; but that

is not how I read Homer.

In fact, so jealous are some of those who well and wisely love the

_chansons_, that I have known objections taken to ranking as pure

examples, despite their undoubted age and merit, such pieces as _Amis et

Amiles_ (for passion and pathos and that just averted tragedy which is

so difficult to manage, one of the finest of all) and the _Voyage a

Constantinoble_, the single early specimen of mainly or purely comic

donnee.[15] This seems to me, I confess, mere prudery or else mistaken

logic, starting from the quite unjustifiable proposition that nothing

that is not found in the _Chanson de Roland_ ought to be found in any

_chanson_. But we may admit that the "bones"--the simplest terms of the

_chanson_-formula--hardly include varied interests, though they allow

such interests to be clothed upon and added to them.

[Sidenote: But a fair balance of actual story merit.]

Despite this admission, however, and despite the further one that it is

to the "romances" proper--Arthurian, classical, and adventurous--rather

than to the _chansons_ that one must look for the first satisfactory

examples of such clothing and addition, it is not to be denied that the

_chansons_ themselves provide a great deal of it--whether because of

adulteration with strictly "romance" matter is a question for debate in

another place and not here. But it would be a singularly ungrateful

memory which should, in this place, leave the reader with the idea that

the _Chanson de Geste_ as such is merely monotonous and dull. The

intensity of the appeal of _Roland_ is no doubt helped by that approach

to bareness--even by a certain tautology--which has been mentioned.

_Aliscans_, which few could reject as faithless to the type, contains,

even without the family of dependent poems which cluster round it, a

vivid picture of the valiant insubordinate warrior in William of Orange,

with touches of comedy or at least horse-play.

[Sidenote: Some instances of this.]

The striking, and to all but unusually dull or hopelessly "modern"

imaginations as unusually beautiful, centre-point of _Amis et

Amiles_,--where one of the heroes, who has sworn a "white" perjury to

save his friend and is punished for it by the terror, "white" in the

other sense, of leprosy, is abandoned by his wife, and only healed by

the blood of the friend's children, is the crowning instance of another

set of appeals. The catholicity of a man's literary taste, and his more

special capacity of appreciating things mediaeval, may perhaps be better

estimated by his opinion of _Amis et Amiles_ than by any other

touchstone; for it has more appeals than this almost tragic one--a much

greater development of the love-motive than either _Roland_ or

_Aliscans_, and a more varied interest generally. Its continuation,

_Jourdains de Blaivies_, takes the hero abroad, as do many other

_chansons_, especially two of the most famous, _Huon de Bordeaux_ and

_Ogier de Danemarche_. These two are also good--perhaps the

best--examples of a process very much practised in the Middle Ages and

leaving its mark on future fiction--that of expansion and continuation.

In the case of Ogier, indeed, this process was carried so far that

enquiring students have been known to be sadly disappointed in the

almost total disconnection between William Morris's beautiful section of

_The Earthly Paradise_ and the original French, as edited by Barrois in

the first attempt to collect the _chansons_ seventy or eighty years ago.

The great "Orange" subcycle, of which _Aliscans_ is the most famous,

extends in many directions, but is apt in all its branches to cling more

to "war and politics." William of Orange is in this respect partly

matched by Garin of Lorraine. No _chanson_ retained its popularity, in

every sense of that word, better than the _Quatre Fils d'Aymon_--the

history of Renaut de Montauban and his brothers and cousin, the famous

enchanter-knight Maugis. As a "boy's book" there is perhaps none better,

and the present writer remembers an extensive and apparently modern

English translation which was a favourite "sixty years since." _Berte

aux grands Pies_, the earliest form of a well-known legend, has the

extrinsic charm of being mentioned by Villon; while there is no more

agreeable love-story, on a small scale and in a simple tone, than that

of Doon and Nicolette[16] in _Doon de Mayence_. And not to make a mere

catalogue which, if supported by full abstracts of all the pieces, would

be inordinately bulky and would otherwise convey little idea to readers,

it may be said that the general _chanson_ practice of grouping together

or branching out the poems (whichever metaphor be preferred) after the

fashion of a family-tree involves of itself no inconsiderable call on

the tale-telling faculties. That the writers pay little or no attention

to chronological and other possibilities is hardly much to say against

them; if this be an unforgivable sin it is not clear how either Dickens

or Thackeray is to escape damnation, with Sir Walter to greet them in

their uncomfortable sojourn.

But it is undoubtedly true that the almost exclusive concentration of

the attention on war prevents the attainment of much detailed

novel-interest. Love affairs--some glanced at above--do indeed make, in

some of the _chansons_, a fuller appearance than the flashlight view of

lost tragedy which we have in _Roland_. But until the reflex influence

of the Arthurian romance begins to work, they are, though not always

disagreeable or ungraceful, of a very simple and primitive kind, as

indeed are the delineations of manners generally.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: The classical borrowings--Troy and Alexander.]

The "matter of Rome the Great," as the original text has it (though, in

fact, Rome proper has little to do with the most important examples of

the class), adds very importantly to the development of romance, and

through that, of novel. Its bulk is considerable, and its examples have

interest of various kinds. But for us this interest is concentrated

upon, if not exclusively confined to, the two great groups (undertaken

by, and illustrated in, the three great literary languages of the

earlier Middle Ages, and, as usual, most remarkably and originally in

French) of the Siege of Troy and the life of Alexander. It should be

almost enough to say of the former that it introduced,[17] with

practically nothing but the faintest suggestion from really classical

sources, the great romance-novel of the loves of Troilus and Cressida to

the world's literature; and of the second, that it gives us the first

instance of the infusion of Oriental mystery and marvel that we can

discern in the literature of the West. For details about the books which

contain these things, their authors and their probable sources and

development, the reader must, as in other cases, look elsewhere.[18] It

is only our business here to say something about the general nature of

the things themselves and about the additions that they made to the

capital, and in some cases almost to the "plant," of fiction.

[Sidenote: _Troilus._]

That the Troilus and Cressida romance, with its large provision and its

more large suggestion of the accomplished love-story, evolved from older

tale-tellers by Boccaccio and Chaucer and Henryson and Shakespeare, is

not a pure creation of the earlier Middle Ages, few people who patiently

attend to evidence can now believe. Even in the wretched summaries of

the Tale of Troy by Dictys and Dares (which again no such person as the

one just described can put very early), the real novel-interest--even

the most slender romance-interest--is hardly present at all. Benoit de

Sainte-More in the twelfth century may not have actually invented this;

it is one of the principles of this book, as of all that its writer has

written, that the quest of the inventor of a story is itself the vainest

of inventions. But it is certain that nobody hitherto has been able to

"get behind him," and it is still more certain that he has given enough

base for the greater men who followed to build upon. If he cannot be

credited with the position of the pseudo-Callisthenes (see below) in

reference to the Alexander story, he may fairly share that of his

contemporary Geoffrey of Monmouth, if not even of Nennius, as regards

that of Arthur. The situation, or rather the group of situations, is of

the most promising and suggestive kind, negatively and positively. In

the first place the hero and heroine are persons about whom the great

old poets of the subject have said little or nothing; and what an

immense advantage this is all students of the historical novel of the

last hundred years know. In the second, the way in which they are put in

action (or ready for action) is equally satisfactory, or let us say

stimulating. In a great war a prince loves a noble lady, who by birth

and connections belongs to the enemy, and after vicissitudes, which can

be elaborated according to the taste and powers of the romancer, gains

her love. But the course of this love is interrupted by her surrender or

exchange to the enemy themselves; her beauty attracts, nay has already

attracted, the fancy of one of the enemy's leaders, and being not merely

a coquette but a light-o'-love[19] she admits his addresses. Her

punishment follows or does not follow, is accomplished during the life

of her true lover or not, according again to the taste and fancy of the

person who handles the story. But the scheme, even at its simplest, is

novel-soil: marked out, matured, manured, and ready for cultivation, and

the crops which can be grown on it depend entirely upon the skill of the

cultivator.

For all this some would, as has been said above, see sufficient

suggestion in the Greek Romance. I have myself known the examples of

that Romance for a very long time and have always had a high opinion of

it; but except what has been already noticed--the prominence of the

heroine--I can see little or nothing that the Mediaeval romance could

possibly owe to it, and as a matter of fact hardly anything else in

common between the two. In the last, and to some extent the most

remarkable (though very far from the best if not nearly the worst), of

the Greek Romances, the _Hysminias and Hysmine_ of Eustathius, we have

indeed got to a point in advance, taking that word in a peculiar sense,

even of Troilus at its most accomplished, that is to say, the Marinism

or Marivaudage, if not even the Meredithese, of language and sentiment.

But _Hysminias and Hysmine_ is probably not older than Benoit de

Sainte-More's story, and as has just been said, Renaissance, nay

post-Renaissance, not Mediaeval in character. We must, of course,

abstain from "reading back" Chaucer or even Boccaccio into Benoit or

into his probable plagiarist Guido de Columnis; but there is nothing

uncritical or wrong in "reading forward" from these to the later

writers. The hedge-rose is there, which will develop into, and serve as

a support for, the hybrid perpetual--a term which could itself be

developed in application, after the fashion of a mediaeval _moralitas_.

And when we have actually come to Pandaro and Deiphobus, to the "verse

of society," as it may be called in a new sense, of the happier part of

Chaucer and to the intense tragedy of the later part of Henryson, then

we are in the workshop, if not in the actual show-room, of the completed

novel. It would be easy, as it was not in the case of the _chansons_,

to illustrate directly by a translation, either here from Benoit or

later from the shortened prose version of the fourteenth century, which

we also possess; but it is not perhaps necessary, and would require much

space.

[Sidenote: _Alexander._]

The influence of the Alexander story, though scarcely less, is of a

widely different kind. In _Troilus_, as has been said, the Middle Age is

working on scarcely more than the barest hints of antiquity, which it

amplifies and supplements out of its own head and its own heart--a head

which can dream dream-webs of subtlest texture unknown to the ancients,

and a heart which can throb and bleed in a fashion hardly shown by any

ancient except Sappho. With the Alexander group we find it much more

passively recipient, though here also exercising its talent for varying

and amplification. The controversies over the pseudo-Callisthenes,

"Julius Valerius," the _Historia de Praeliis_, etc., are once more not

for us; but results of them, which have almost or quite emerged from the

state of controversy, are. It is certain that the appearance, in the

classical languages, of the wilder legends about Alexander was as early

at least as the third century after Christ--that is to say, long before

even "Dark" let alone "Middle" Ages were thought of--and perhaps

earlier. There seems to be very little doubt that these legends were of

Egyptian or Asiatic origin, and so what we vaguely call "Oriental." They

long anticipated the importing afresh of such influences by the

Crusades, and they must, with all except Christians and Jews (that is to

say, with the majority), have actually forestalled the Oriental

influence of the Scriptures. Furthermore, when Mediaeval France began to

create a new body of European literature, the Crusades had taken place;

the appetite for things Oriental and perhaps we should say the

half-imaginative power of appreciating them, had become active; and a

considerable amount of literature in the vernacular had already been

composed. It was not wonderful, therefore, that the _trouveres_ should

fly upon this spoil. By not the least notable of the curiosities of

literature in its own class, they picked out a historical but not very

important episode--the siege of Gaza and Alexander's disgraceful cruelty

to its brave defender--and made of this a regular _Chanson de Geste_ (in

all but "Family" connection), the _Fuerres de Gadres_, a poem of several

thousand lines. But the most generally popular (though sometimes

squabbled over) parts of the story, were the supposed perversion of

Olympias, not by the God Ammon but by the magician-king Nectanabus

personating the God and becoming thereby father of the Hero; the Indian

and some other real campaigns (the actual conquest of Persia was very

slightly treated), and, far above all, the pure Oriental wonder-tales of

the descent into the sea, the march to the Fountain of Youth, and other

myths of the kind.

Few things can be more different than the story-means used in these two

legends; yet it must be personal taste rather than strict critical

evaluation which pronounces one more important to the development of the

novel than the other. There is a little love interest in the Alexander

poems--the heroine of this part being Queen Candace--but it is slight,

episodic, and rudimentary beside the complex and all-absorbing passions

which, when genius took the matter in hand, were wrought out of the

truth of Troilus and the faithlessness of Cressid. The joys of fighting

or roaming, of adventure and quest, and above all those of marvel, are

the attractions which the Alexander legend offers, and who shall say

that they are insufficient? At any rate no one can deny that they have

been made the seasoning, if not the stuff and substance, of an enormous

slice of the romance interest, and of a very large part of that of the

novel.

[Sidenote: The Arthurian Legend.]

It is scarcely necessary to speak of other classical romances, and it is

of course very desirable to keep in mind that the Alexander story, in no

form in which we have it, attempts any _strictly_ novel interest; while

though that interest is rife in some forms of "Troilus," those forms are

not exactly of the period, and are in no case of the language, with

which we are dealing. It was an Italian, an Englishman, and a Scot who

each in his own speech--one in the admirable vulgar tongue, of which at

that time and as a finished thing, Italian was alone in Europe as

possessor; the others in the very best of Middle English, and, as some

think, almost the best of Middle Scots verse--displayed the full

possibilities of Benoit's story. But the third "matter," the matter of

Britain or (in words better understanded of most people) the Arthurian

Legend, after starting in Latin, was, as far as language went, for some

time almost wholly French, though it is exceedingly possible that at

least one, if not more, of its main authors was no Frenchman. And in

this "matter" the exhibition of the powers of fiction--prose as well as

verse--was carried to a point almost out of sight of that reached by the

_Chansons_, and very far ahead of any contemporary treatment even of the

Troilus story.

[Sidenote: Chrestien de Troyes and the theories about him.]

Before, however, dealing with this great Arthurian story as a stage in

the history of the Novel-Romance in and by itself, we must come to a

figure which, though we have very little substantial knowledge of it,

there is some reason for admitting as one of the first named and "coted"

figures in French literature, at least as regards fiction in verse. It

is well known that the action of modern criticism is in some respects

strikingly like that of the sea in one of the most famous and vivid

passages[20] of Spenser's unequalled scene-painting in words with

musical accompaniment of them. It delights in nothing so much as in

stripping one part of the shore of its belongings, and hurrying them off

to heap upon another part. Chrestien de Troyes is one of the lucky

personages who have benefited, not least and most recently, by this

fancy. It is true that the actual works attributed to him have remained

the same--his part of the shore has not been actually extended like part

of that of the Humber. But it has had new riches, honours, and

decorations heaped upon it till it has become, in the actual Spenserian

language of another but somewhat similar passage (111. iv. 20), a "rich

strond" indeed. Until a comparatively recent period, the opinion

entertained of Chrestien, by most if not all competent students of him,

was pretty uniform, and, though quite favourable, not extraordinarily

high. He was recognised as a past-master of the verse _roman

d'aventures_ in octosyllabic couplet, who probably took his

heterogeneous materials wherever he found them; "did not invent much"

(as Thackeray says of Smollett), but treated whatever he did treat in a

singularly light and pleasant manner, not indeed free from the somewhat

undistinguished fluency to which this "light and lewed" couplet, as

Chaucer calls it, is liable, and showing no strong grasp either of

character or of plot, but on the whole a very agreeable writer, and a

quite capital example of the better class of _trouvere_, far above the

_improvisatore_ on the one hand and the dull compiler on the other; but

below, if not quite so far below, the definitely poetic poet.

To an opinion something like this the present writer, who formed it long

ago, not at second hand but from independent study of originals, and who

has kept up and extended his acquaintance with Chrestien, still adheres.

Of late, however, as above suggested, "Chrestiens" have gone up in the

market to a surprising extent. Some twenty years ago the late M. Gaston

Paris[21] announced and, with all his distinguished ability and his

great knowledge elaborately supported, his conclusions, that the great

French prose Arthurian romances (which had hitherto been considered by

the best authorities, including his own no less admirable father, M.

Paulin Paris, slightly anterior to the poet of Troyes, and in all

probability the source of part at least of his work) were posterior and

probably derivative. Now this, of itself, would of course to some extent

put up Chrestien's value. But it, and the necessary corollaries from

it, as originality and so forth, by no means exhaust the additional

honours and achievements which have been heaped upon Chrestien by M.

Paris and by others who have followed, more or less accepted, and in

some cases bettered his ascriptions. In the first and principal place,

there has been a tendency, almost general, to dethrone Walter Map from

his old position as the real begetter of the completed Arthurian

romance, and to substitute the Troyan. Then, partly in support, but also

to some extent, I think, independently of this immense ennoblement,

discoveries have been made of gifts and graces in Chrestien himself,

which had entirely escaped the eyes of so excellent a critic, so erudite

a scholar, and so passionate a lover of Old French literature as the

elder M. Paris, and which continue to be invisible to the far inferior

gifts and knowledge, but if I may dare to say so, the equal good will

and the not inconsiderable critical experience, of the present

historian.

Now with large parts of this matter we have, fortunately enough, nothing

to do, and the actual authorship of the great Arthurian conception,

namely, the interweaving of the Graal story on the one hand and the

loves of Lancelot and Guinevere on the other, with the Geoffrey of

Monmouth matter, concerns us hardly at all. But some have gone even

further than has been yet hinted in the exaltation of Chrestien. They

have discovered in him--"him-by-himself-him"--as the author of his

actual extant works and not as putative author of the real Arthuriad,

not merely a pattern example of the court _trouvere_--as much as this,

or nearly as much, has been admitted here--but almost the inventor of

romance and even of something very like novel, a kind of mediaeval

Scott-Bulwer-Meredith, equally great at adventure, fashion, and

character-analysis; subject only, and that not much, to the limitations

of the time. In fact, if I do not do some of these panegyrists

injustice, we ought to have a fancy bust of Chrestien, with the titles

of his works gracefully inscribed on the pedestal, as a frontispiece to

this book, if not even a full-length statue, robed like a small St.

Ursula, and like her in Memling's presentation at Bruges, sheltering in

its ample folds the child-like figures of future French novelists and

romancers, from the author of _Aucassin et Nicolette_ to M. Anatole

France.

Again, some fifty years of more or less critical reading of novels of

all ages and more than one or two languages, combined with nearly forty

years reading of Chrestien himself and a passion for Old French, leave

the present writer quite unable to rise to this beatific vision. But let

us, before saying any more what Chrestien could or could not do, see, in

the usual cold-blooded way, what he _did_.

[Sidenote: His unquestioned work.]

The works attributed to this very differently, though never

unfavourably, estimated tale-teller--at least those which concern

us--are _Percevale le Gallois_, _Le Chevalier a[22] la Charette_, _Le

Chevalier au Lyon_, _Erec et Enide_, _Cliges_, and a much shorter

_Guillaume d'Angleterre_. This last has nothing to do with the Conqueror

(though the title has naturally deceived some), and is a semi-mystical

romance of the group derived from the above-mentioned legend of St.

Eustace, and represented in English by the beautiful story of _Sir

Isumbras_. It is very doubtfully Chrestien's, and in any case very

unlike his other work; but those who think him the Arthurian magician

might make something of it, as being nearer the tone of the older Graal

stories than the rest of his compositions, even _Percevale_ itself. Of

these, all, except the _Charette_, deal with what may be called outliers

of the Arthurian story. _Percevale_ is the longest, but its immense

length required, by common confession, several continuators;[23] the

others have a rather uniform allowance of some six or seven thousand

lines. _Cliges_ is one of the most "outside" of all, for the hero,

though knighted by Arthur, is the disinherited heir of Constantinople,

and the story is that of the recovery of his kingdom. _Erec_, as the

second part of the title will truly suggest, though the first may

disguise it, gives us the story of the first of Tennyson's original

_Idylls_. The _Chevalier au Lyon_ is a delightful romance of the Gawain

group, better represented by its English adaptation, _Ywain_, than any

other French example. _Percevale_ and the _Charette_ touch closest on

the central Arthurian story, and the latter has been the chief

battlefield as to Chrestien's connection therewith, some even begging

the question to the extent of adopting for it the title _Lancelot_.

[Sidenote: Comparison of the _Chevalier a la Charette_ and the prose

_Lancelot_.]

The subject is the episode, well known to English readers from Malory,

of the abduction of Guinevere by Meleagraunce, the son of King

Bagdemagus; of the inability of all knights but Lancelot (who has been

absent from Court in one of the lovers' quarrels) to rescue her; and of

his undertaking the task, though hampered in various ways, one of the

earliest of which compelled him to ride in a cart--a thing regarded, by

one of the odd[24] conventions of chivalry, as disgraceful to a knight.

Meleagraunce, though no coward, is treacherous and "felon," and all

sorts of mishaps befall Lancelot before he is able for the second time

to conquer his antagonist, and finally to take his over and over again

forfeited life. But long before this he has arrived at the castle where

Guinevere is imprisoned; and has been enabled to arrange a meeting with

her at night, which is accomplished by wrenching out the bars of her

window. The ill chances and _quiproquos_ which result from his having

cut his hands in the proceeding (though the actual visit is not

discovered), and the arts by which Meleagraunce ensnares the destined

avenger for a time, lengthen out the story till, by the final contest,

Meleagraunce goes to his own place and the Queen is restored to hers.

Unfortunately the blots of constant tautology and verbiage, with not

infrequent flatness, are on all this gracious story as told by

Chrestien.[25] Among the traps and temptations which are thrown in

Lancelot's way to the Queen is one of a highly "sensational" nature. In

the night Lancelot hears a damsel, who is his hostess, though he has

refused her most thorough hospitality, shrieking for assistance; and on

coming to the spot finds her in a situation demanding instant help,

which she begs, if the irreparable is not to happen. But the poet not

only gives us a heavily figured description of the men-at-arms who bar

the way to rescue, but puts into the mouth of the intending rescuer a

speech (let us be exact) of twenty-eight lines and a quarter, during

which the just mentioned irreparable, if it had been seriously meant,

might have happened with plenty of time to spare. So, in the crowning

scene (excellently told in Malory), where the lover forces his way

through iron bars to his love, reckless of the tell-tale witness of his

bleeding hands, the circumlocutions are _plusquam_ Richardsonian--and do

not fall far short of a serious anticipation of Shakespeare's burlesque

in _A Midsummer Night's Dream_. The mainly gracious description is

spoilt by terrible bathetics from time to time. Guinevere in her white

nightdress and mantle of scarlet and _camus_[26] on one side of the

bars, Lancelot outside, exchanging sweet salutes, "for much was he fain

of her and she of him," are excellent. The next couplet, or quatrain,

almost approaches the best poetry. "Of villainy or annoy make they no

parley or complaint; but draw near each other so much at least that they

hold each other hand by hand." But what follows? That they cannot come

together vexes them so immeasurably that--what? They blame the iron work

for it. This certainly shows an acute understanding[27] and a very

creditable sense of the facts of the situation on the part of both

lovers; but it might surely have been taken for granted. Also, it takes

Lancelot forty lines to convince his lady that when bars are in your way

there is nothing like pulling them out of it. So in the actual

pulling-out there is the idlest exaggeration and surplusage; the first

bar splits one of Lancelot's fingers to the sinews and cuts off the top

joint of the next. The actual embraces are prettily and gracefully told

(though again with otiose observations about silence), and the whole,

from the knight's coming to the window to his leaving it, takes 150

lines. Now hear the prose of the so-called "Vulgate _Lancelot_."

"And he came to the window: and the Queen, who waited for

him, slept not, but came thither. And the one threw to the

other their arms, and they felt each other as much as they

could reach. "Lady," said Lancelot, "if I could enter

yonder, would it please you?" "Enter," said she, "fair sweet

friend? How could this happen?" "Lady," said he, "if it

please you, it could happen lightly." "Certainly," said she,

"I should wish it willingly above everything." "Then, in

God's name," said he, "that shall well happen. For the iron

will never hold." "Wait, then," said she, "till I have gone

to bed." Then he drew the irons from their sockets so softly

that no noise was made and no bar broke."

In this simple prose, sensuous and passionate for all its simplicity, is

told the rest of the story. There are eighteen lines of it altogether in

Dr. Sommer's reprint, but as these are long quarto lines, let us

multiply them by some three to get the equivalent of the "skipping

octosyllables." There will remain fifty to a hundred and fifty, with, in

the prose, some extra matter not in the verse. But the acme of the

contrast is reached in these words of the prose, which answer to some

forty lines of the poet's watering-out. "Great was the joy that they

made each other that night, for long had each suffered for the other.

And when the day came, they parted." Beat that who can!

Many years ago, and not a few before M. Gaston Paris had published his

views, I read these two forms of the story in the valuable joint

edition, verse and prose, of M. Jonckbloet, which some ruffian (may

Heaven _not_ assoil him!) has since stolen or hidden from me. And I said

then to myself, "There is no doubt which of these is the original."

Thirty years later, with an unbroken critical experience of imaginative

work in prose and verse during the interval, I read them again in Dr.

Forster's edition of the verse and Dr. Sommer's of the prose, and said,

"There is less doubt than ever." That the prose should have been

prettified and platitudinised, decorated and diluted into the verse is a

possibility which we know to be not only possible but likely, from a

thousand more unfortunate examples. That the contrary process should

have taken place is practically unexampled and, especially at that time,

largely unthinkable. At any rate, whosoever did it had a much greater

genius than Chrestien's.

This is no place to argue out the whole question, but a single

particular may be dealt with. The curiously silly passage about the bars

above given is a characteristic example of unlucky and superfluous

amplification of the perfectly natural question and answer of the prose,

"May I come to you?" "Yes, but how?" an example to be paralleled by

thousands of others at the time and by many more later. Taken the other

way it would be a miracle. Prose abridgers of poetry did not go to work

like that in the twelfth-thirteenth century--nor, even in the case of

Charles Lamb, have they often done so since.

It is, however, very disagreeable to have to speak disrespectfully of a

writer so agreeable in himself and so really important in our story as

Chrestien. His own gifts and performances are, as it seems to me, clear

enough. He took from this or that source--his selection of the _Erec_

and _Percivale_ matters, if not also that of _Yvain_, suggests others

besides the, by that time as I think, concentrated Arthurian story--and

from the Arthuriad itself the substance of the _Chevalier a la

Charette_. He varied and dressed them up with pleasant etceteras, and

in especial, sometimes, though not always, embroidered the already

introduced love-motive with courtly fantasies and with a great deal of

detail. I should not be at all disposed to object if somebody says that

he, before any one else, set the type of the regular verse _Roman

d'aventures_. It seems likely, again, from the pieces referred to above,

that he may have had originals more definitely connected with Celtic

sources, if not actually Celtic themselves, than those which have given

us the mighty architectonic of the "Vulgate" _Arthur_. In his own way

and place he is a great and an attractive figure--not least in the

history of the novel. But I can see nothing in him that makes me think

him likely, and much that makes me think him utterly unlikely, to be the

author of what I conceive to be the greatest, the most epoch-making, and

almost the originating conception of the novel-romance itself. Who it

was that did conceive this great thing I do not positively know. All

external evidence points to Walter Map; no internal evidence, that I

have seen, seems to me really to point away from him. But if any one

likes let us leave him a mere Eidolon, an earlier "Great Unknown." Our

business is, once more, with what he, whoever he was, did.

[Sidenote: The constitution of the Arthuriad.]

The multiplicity of things done, whether by "him" or "them," is

astonishing; and it is quite possible, indeed likely, that they were not

all done by the same person. Mediaeval continuators (as has been seen in

the case of Chrestien) worked after and into the work of each other in a

rather uncanny fashion; and the present writer frankly confesses that he

no more knows where Godfrey de Lagny took up the _Charette_, or the

various other sequelists the _Percevale_, from Chrestien than he would

have known, without confession, the books of the _Odyssey_ done by Mr.

Broome and Mr. Fenton from those done by Mr. Pope. The _grand-oeuvre_

is the combination of Lancelot as (1) lover of the Queen; (2) descendant

of the Graalwards; (3) author, in consequence of his sin, of the

general failure of the Round Table Graal-Quest; (4) father of its one

successful but half-unearthly Seeker; (5) bringer-about (in more ways

than one[28]) of the intestine dissension which facilitates the invasion

of Mordred and the foreigners and so the Passing of Arthur, of his own

rejection by the repentant Queen, and of his death. As regards minor

details of plot and incident there have to be added the bringing in of

the pre-Round Table part of the story by Lancelot's descent from King

Ban and his connections with King Bors, both Arthur's old allies, and

both, as we may call them, "Graal-heirs"; the further connection with

the Merlin legend by Lancelot's fostering under the Lady of the

Lake;[29] the exaltation, inspiring, and, as it were, unification of

the scattered knight-adventures through Lancelot's constant presence as

partaker, rescuer, and avenger;[30] the human interest given to the

Graal-Quest (the earlier histories being strikingly lacking in this) by

his failure, and a good many more. But above all there are the general

characters of the knight and the Queen to make flesh and blood of the

whole.

Not merely the exact author or authors, but even the exact source or

sources of this complicated, fateful, and exquisite imagination are,

once more, not known. Years ago it was laid down finally by the most

competent of possible authorities (the late Sir John Rhys) that "the

love of Lancelot and Guinevere is unknown to Welsh literature."

Originals for the "greatest knight" have been sought by guesswork, by

idle play on words and names, if not also by positive forgery, in that

Breton literature which does not exist. There do exist versions of the

story in which Lancelot plays no very prominent part, and there is even

one singular version--certainly late and probably devised by a proper

moral man afraid of scandal--which makes Lancelot outlive the Queen,

quite comfortably continuing his adventurous career (this is perhaps the

"furthest" of the Unthinkable in literature), and (not, it may be owned,

quite inconsistently) hints that the connection was merely Platonic

throughout. These things are explicable, but better negligible. For my

own part I have always thought that the loves of Tristram and Iseult

(which, as has been said, were originally un-Arthurian) suggested the

main idea to the author of it, being taken together with Guinevere's

falseness with Mordred in the old quasi-chronicle, and perhaps the story

of the abduction by Melvas (Meleagraunce), which seems to be possibly a

genuine Welsh legend. There are in the Tristram-Iseult-Mark trio quite

sufficient suggestions of Lancelot-Guinevere-Arthur; while the far

higher plane on which the novice-novelist sets his lovers, and even the

very interesting subsequent exaltation of Tristram and Iseult themselves

to familiarity and to some extent equality with the other pair, has

nothing critically difficult in it.

But this idea, great and promising as it was, required further

fertilisation, and got it from another. The Graal story is (once more,

according to authority of the greatest competence, and likely if

anything to be biassed the other way) pretty certainly not Welsh in

origin, and there is no reason to think that it originally had anything

to do with Arthur. Even after it obeyed the strange "suck" of legends

towards this centre whirlpool, or Loadstone Rock, of romance, it yielded

nothing intimately connected with the Arthurian Legend itself at first,

and such connection as succeeded seems pretty certainly[31] to be that

of which Percevale is the hero, and an outlier, not an integral part.

But either the same genius (as one would fain hope) as that which

devised the profane romance of Lancelot and Guinevere, or another,

further grafted or inarched the sacred romance of the Graal and its

Quest with the already combined love-and-chivalry story. Lancelot, the

greatest of knights, and of the true blood of the Graal-guardians, ought

to accomplish the mysteries; but he cannot through sin, and that sin is

this very love for Guinevere. The Quest, in which (despite warning and

indeed previous experience) he takes part, not merely gives occasion for

adventures, half-mystical, half-chivalrous, which far exceed in

interest the earlier ones, but directly leads to the dispersion and

weakening of the Round Table. And so the whole draws together to an end

identical in part with that of the Chronicle story, but quite infinitely

improved upon it.

[Sidenote: Its approximation to the novel proper.]

Now not only is there in this the creation of the novel _in posse_, of

the romance _in esse_, but it is brought about in a curiously noteworthy

fashion. A hundred years and more later the greatest known writer of the

Middle Ages, and one of the three or four greatest of the world, defined

the subjects of poetry as Love, War, and Religion, or in words which we

may not unfairly translate by these. The earlier master recognised

(practically for the first time) that the romance--that allotropic form

(as the chemists might say) of poetry--must deal with the same. Now in

these forms of the Arthurian legend, which are certainly anterior to the

latter part of the twelfth century, there is a great deal of war and a

good deal of religion, but these motives are mostly separated from each

other, the earlier forms of the Arthur story having nothing to do with

the Graal, and the earlier forms of the Graal story--so far as we can

see--nothing, or extremely little, to do with Arthur. Nor had Love, in

any proper and passionate sense of the word, anything to do with either.

Women and marriage and breaches of marriage appear indeed; but the

earlier Graal stories are dominated by the most ascetic

virginity-worship, and the earlier Arthur-stories show absolutely

nothing of the passion which is the subject of the magnificent overture

of Mr. Swinburne's _Tristram_. Even this story of Tristram himself,

afterwards fired and coloured by passion, seems at first to have shown

nothing but the mixture of animalism, cruelty, and magic which is

characteristic of the Celts.[32] Our magician of a very different

gramarye, were he Walter or Chrestien or some third--Norman, Champenois,

Breton,[33] or Englishman (Welshman or Irishman he pretty certainly was

_not_)--had therefore before him, if not exactly dry bones, yet the

half-vivified material of a chronicle of events on the one hand and a

mystical dream-sermon on the other. He, or a French or English Pallas

for him, had to "think of another thing."

And so he called in Love to reinforce War and Religion and to do its

proper office of uniting, inspiring, and producing Humanity. He

effected, by the union of the three motives, the transformation of a

mere dull record of confused fighting into a brilliant pageant of

knightly adventure. He made the long-winded homilies and genealogies of

the earlier Graal-legend at once take colour from the amorous and

war-like adventures, raise these to a higher and more spiritual plane,

and provide the due punishment for the sins of his erring characters.

The whole story--at least all of it that he chose to touch and all that

he chose to add--became alive. The bones were clothed with flesh and

blood, the "wastable country verament" (as the dullest of the Graal

chroniclers says in a phrase that applies capitally to his own work)

blossomed with flower and fruit. Wars of Arthur with unwilling subjects

or Saxons and Romans; treachery of his wife and nephew and his own

death; miracle-history of the Holy Vessel and pedigree of its

custodians; Round Table; these and many other things had lain as mere

scraps and orts, united by no real plot, yielding no real characters,

satisfying no real interest that could not have been equally satisfied

by an actual chronicle or an actual religious-mystical discourse. And

then the whole was suddenly knit into a seamless and shimmering web of

romance, from the fancy of Uther for Igerne to the "departing of them

all" in Lyonnesse and at Amesbury and at Joyous Gard. A romance

undoubtedly, but also incidentally providing the first real novel-hero

and the first real novel-heroine in the persons of the lovers who, as in

the passage above translated, sometimes "made great joy of each other

for that they had long caused each other much sorrow," and finally

expiated in sorrow what was unlawful in their joy.

Let us pass to these persons themselves.

[Sidenote: Especially in the characters and relations of Lancelot and

Guinevere.]

The first point to note about Lancelot is the singular fashion in which

he escapes one of the dangers of the hero. Aristotle had never said that

a hero must be faultless; indeed, he had definitely said exactly the

contrary, of at least the tragic hero. But one of the worst of the many

misunderstandings of his dicta brought the wrong notion about, and

Virgil--that exquisite craftsman in verse and phrase, but otherwise,

perhaps, not great poet and very dangerous pattern--had confirmed this

notion by his deplorable figurehead. It is also fair to confess that all

except morbid tastes do like to see the hero win. But if he is to be a

hero of Rymer, not merely

Like Paris handsome[34] and like Hector brave,

but as pious as Aeneas; "a rich fellow enough," with blood hopelessly

blue and morals spotlessly copy-bookish--in other words, a Sir Charles

Grandison--he will duly meet with the detestation and "conspuing" of the

elect. Almost the only just one of the numerous and generally silly

charges latterly brought against Tennyson's Arthurian handling is that

his conception of the blameless king does a little smack of this false

idea, does something grow to it. It is one of the chief points in which

he departed, not merely from the older stories (which he probably did

not know), but from Malory's astonishing redaction of them (which he

certainly did).

[Sidenote: Lancelot.]

But Lancelot escapes this worst of fates in the _Idylls_ themselves, and

much more does he escape it in the originals. In the first place, though

he invariably (or always till the Graal Quest) "wins through," he

constantly does not do so without intermediate hairbreadth escapes, and

even not a few adventures which are at first not escapes at all. And

just as his perpetual bafflement in the Quest salts and seasons his

triumphs in the saddle, so does the ruling passion of his sin save, from

anything approaching mawkishness,[35] his innumerable and yet

inoffensive virtues; his chastity, save in this instance, which chastity

itself, by a further stroke of art, is saved from _niaiserie_ by the

plotted adventures with Elaine; his courtesy, his mercifulness, his

wonderfully early notion of a gentleman (_v. inf._), his invariable

disregard of self, and yet his equally invariable naturalness. Pious

Aeneas had not the least objection to bringing about the death of Dido,

as he might have known he was doing (unless he was as great a fool as he

is a prig); and he is probably never more disgusting or Pecksniffian

than when he looks back on the flames of Dido's pyre and is really

afraid that something unpleasant must have happened, though he can't

think what the matter can be. But _he_, one feels sure, would never have

lifted up his hand against a woman, unless she had richly deserved it on

the strictest patriotic scores, as in the case of Helen, when his mamma

fortunately interfered. On the other hand, Lancelot was "of the Asra who

die when they love" and love till they die--nay, who would die if they

did not love. But it is certain (for there is a very nice miniature of

it reproduced from the MS. in M. Paulin Paris's abstract) that, for a

moment, he drew his sword on Elaine to punish the deceit which made him

unwittingly false to Guinevere. It is very shocking, no doubt, but

exceedingly natural; and of course he did not kill or even (like

Philaster) wound her, though nobody interfered to prevent him. Many of

the incidents which bring out his character are well known to moderns by

poem and picture, though others, as well worth knowing, are not. But the

human contrasts of success and failure, of merit and sin, have never, I

think, been quite brought out, and to bring them out completely here

would take too much room. We may perhaps leave this other--quite

other--"_First_ Gentleman in Europe" with the remark that Chrestien de

Troyes gives only one side of him, and therefore does not give him at

all. The Lancelot of board and bower, of travel and tournament, he does

very fairly. But of the Lancelot of the woods and the hermitage, of the

dream at the foot of the cross, of the mystic voyage and the just

failing (if failing) effort of Carbonek, he gives, because he knows,

nothing.

[Sidenote: Guinevere.]

Completed as he was, no matter for the moment by whom, he is thus the

first hero of romance and nearly the greatest; but his lady is worthy of

him, and she is almost more original as an individual. It is true that

she is not the first heroine, as he is, if not altogether, almost the

first hero. Helen was that, though very imperfectly revealed and

gingerly handled. Calypso (hardly Circe) _might_ have been. Medea is

perhaps nearer still, especially in Apollonius. But the Greek romancers

were the first who had really busied themselves with the heroine: they

took her up seriously and gave her a considerable position. But they did

not succeed in giving her much character. The naughty _not_-heroine of

Achilles Tatius, though she has less than none in Mr. Pope's supposed

innuendo sense, alone has an approach to some in the other. As for the

accomplished Guinevere's probable contemporary, the Ismene or Hysmine of

Eustathius Macrembolites (_v. sup._ p. 18), she is a sort of

Greek-mediaeval Henrietta Temple, with Mr. Meredith and Mr. Disraeli by

turns holding the pen, though with neither of them supplying the brains.

But Guinevere is a very different person; or rather, she _is_ a person,

and the first. To appreciate her she must be compared with herself in

earlier presentations, and then considered fully as she appears in the

Vulgate--for Malory, though he has given much, has not given the whole

of her, and Tennyson has painted only the last panel of the polyptych

wholly, and has rather over-coloured that.[36]

In what we may call the earliest representations of her, she has hardly

any colour at all. She is a noble Roman lady, and very beautiful. For a

time she is apparently very happy with her husband, and he with her; and

if she seems to make not the slightest scruple about "taking up with"

her nephew, co-regent and fellow rebel, why, noble Roman ladies thought

nothing of divorce and not much of adultery. The only old Welsh story

(the famous Melvas one so often referred to) that we have about her in

much detail merely establishes the fact, pleasantly formulated by M.

Paulin Paris, that she was "tres sujette a etre enlevee," but in itself

(unless we admit the Peacockian triad of the "Three Fatal Slaps of the

Isle of Britain" as evidence) again says nothing about her character.

If, as seems probable if not certain, the _Launfal_ legend, with its

libel on her, is of Breton origin, it makes her an ordinary Celtic

princess, a spiritual sister of Iseult when she tried to kill Brengwain,

and a cross between Potiphar's wife and Catherine of Russia, without any

of the good nature and "gentlemanliness" of the last named. The real

Guinevere, the Guinevere of the Vulgate and partly of Malory, is freed

from the colourlessness and the discreditable end of Geoffrey's queen,

transforms the promiscuous and rather _louche_ Melvas incident into an

important episode of her epic or romantic existence, and gives the lie,

even in her least creditable or least charming moments, to the _Launfal_

libel. As before in Lancelot's case, details of her presentation had in

some cases best be either translated in full or omitted, but I cannot

refuse myself the pleasure of attempting, with however clumsy a hand, a

portrait of our, as I believe, English Helen, who gave in French

language to French, and not only French literature, the pattern of a

heroine.

There is not, I think, any ancient authority for the rather commonplace

suggestion, unwisely adopted by Tennyson, that Guinevere fell in love

with Lancelot when he was sent as an ambassador to fetch her; thus

merely repeating Iseult and Tristram, and anticipating Suffolk and

Margaret. In fact, according to the best evidence, Lancelot could not

have been old enough, if he was even born. On the contrary, nothing

could be better than the presentation of her introduction to Arthur and

the course of the wooing in the Vulgate--the other "blessed original."

She first sees Arthur as a foe from the walls of besieged Carmelide, and

admires his valour; she has further occasion to admire it when, as a

friend, he rescues her father, showing himself, as what he really was in

his youth, his own best knight. The pair are genuinely in love with each

other, and the betrothal and parting for fresh fight are the most

gracious passages of the _Merlin_ book, except the better version (_v.

sup._) of the love of Merlin himself and the afterwards libelled

Viviane. Anyhow, she was married because she fell in love with him, and

there is no evidence to show that she and Arthur lived otherwise than

happily together. But, if all tales were true, she had no reason to

regard him as a very faithful husband or a blameless man. She may not

have known (for nobody but Merlin apparently did know) the early and

unwitting incest of the King and his half-sister Margause; but the

extreme ease with which he adopted her own treacherous foster-sister,

the "false Guinevere," and his proceedings with the Saxon enchantress

Camilla, were very strong "sets off" to her own conduct. Also she had a

most disagreeable[37] sister-in-law in Morgane-la-Fee. These are not in

the least offered as excuses, but merely as "lights." Indeed Guinevere

never seems to have hated or disliked her husband, though he often gave

her cause; and if, until the great repentance, she thought more lightly

of "spouse-breach" than Lancelot did, that is not uncharacteristic of

women.[38] In fact, she is a very perfect (not of course in the moral

sense) gentlewoman. She is at once popular with the knights, and loses

that popularity rather by Lancelot's fault than by her own, while

Gawain, who remains faithful to her to the bitter end, or at least till

the luckless slaughter of his brethren, declares at the beginning that

she is the fairest and most gracious, and will be the wisest and best of

queens. She shows something very like humour in the famous and fateful

remark (uttered, it would seem, without the slightest ill or double

meaning at the time) as to Gawain's estimate of Lancelot.[39] She seems

to have had an agreeable petulance (notice, for instance, the rebuke of

Kay at the opening of the _Ywain_ story and elsewhere), which sometimes,

as it naturally would, rises to passionate injustice, as Lancelot

frequently discovered. She is, in fact, always passionate in one or

other sense of that great and terrible and infinite[40] word, but never

tragedy-queenish or vixenish. She falls in love with Lancelot because he

falls in love with her, and because she cannot help it. False as she is

to husband and to lover, to her court and her country,[41] it can hardly

be said that any act of hers, except the love itself and its

irresistible consequences, is faulty. She is not capricious,

extravagant, or tyrannical; in her very jealousy she is not cruel or

revengeful (the original Iseult would certainly have had Elaine poisoned

or poniarded, for which there was ample opportunity). If she torments

her lover, that is because she loves him. If she is unjust to him, that

is because she is a woman. Her last speech to Lancelot after the

catastrophe--Tennyson should have, as has been said, paraphrased this as

he paraphrased the passing of her husband, and from the same texts, and

we should then have had another of the greatest things of English

poetry--shows a noble nature with the [Greek: hamartia] present, but

repented in a strange and great mixture of classical and Christian

tragedy. There is little told in a trustworthy fashion about her

personal appearance. But if Glastonbury traditions about her bones be

true, she was certainly (again like Helen) "divinely tall." And if the

suggestions of Hawker's "Queen Gwennyvar's Round"[42] in the sea round

Tintagel be worked out a little, it will follow that her eyes were

divinely blue.

[Sidenote: Some minor points.]

When such very high praise is given to the position of the (further)

accomplished Arthur-story, it is of course not intended to bestow that

praise on any particular MS. or printed version that exists. It is in

the highest degree improbable that, whether the original magician was

Map, or Chrestien, or anybody else (to repeat a useful formula), we

possess an exact and exclusive copy of the form into which he himself threw

the story. Independently of the fact that no MS., verse or prose, of anything

like the complete story seems old enough, independently of the enormous and

almost innumerable separable accretions, the so-called Vulgate cycle of

"_Graal-Merlin-Arthur-Lancelot-Graal-Quest-Arthur's-Death_" has

considerable variants--the most important and remarkable of which by far

is the large alteration or sequel of the "Vulgate" _Merlin_ which Malory

preferred. In the "Vulgate" itself, too, there are things which were

certainly written either by the great contriver in nodding moods, or by

somebody else,--in fact no one can hope to understand mediaeval

literature who forgets that no mediaeval writer could ever "let a thing

alone": he simply _must_ add or shorten, paraphrase or alter. I rather

doubt whether the Great Unknown himself meant _both_ the amours of

Arthur with Camilla and the complete episode of the false Guinevere to

stand side by side. The first is (as such justifications go) a

sufficient justification of Guinevere by itself; and the conduct of

Arthur in the second is such a combination of folly, cruelty, and all

sorts of despicable behaviour that it overdoes the thing. So, too,

Lancelot's "abscondences," with or without madness, are too many and too

prolonged.[43] The long and totally uninteresting campaign against

Claudas, during the greater part of which Lancelot (who is most of all

concerned) is absent, and in which he takes no part or interest when

present, is another great blot. Some of these things, but not all,

Malory remedied by omission.

To sum up, and even repeat a little, in speaking so highly of this

development--French beyond all doubt as a part of literature, whatever

the nationality, domicile, and temper of the person or persons who

brought it about--I do not desire more to emphasise what I believe to be

a great and not too well appreciated truth than to guard against that

exaggeration which dogs and discredits literary criticism. Of course no

single redaction of the legend in the late twelfth or earliest

thirteenth century contains the story, the whole story, and nothing but

the story as I have just outlined it. Of course the words used do not

apply fully to Malory's English redaction of three centuries later--work

of genius as this appears to me to be. Yet further, I should be fully

disposed to allow that it is only by reading the _posse_ into the

_esse_, under the guidance of later developments of the novel itself,

that the estimate which I have given can be entirely justified. But this

process seems to me to be perfectly legitimate, and to be, in fact, the

only process capable of giving us literary-historical criticism that is

worth having. The writer or writers, known or unknown, whose work we

have been discussing, have got the plot, have got the characters, have

got the narrative faculty required for a complete novel-romance. If they

do not quite know what to do with these things it is only because the

time is not yet. But how much they did, and of how much more they

foreshadowed the doing, the extracts following should show better than

any "talk about it."

[_Lancelot, still under the tutelage of the Lady of the Lake

and ignorant of his own parentage, has met his cousins,

Lionel and Bors, and has been greatly drawn to them._]

[Sidenote: Illustrative extracts translated from the

"Vulgate." The youth of Lancelot.]

Now turns herself the Lady back to the Lake, and takes the

children with her. And when she had gone[44] a good way, she

called Lancelot a little way off the road and said to him

very kindly, "King's son,[45] how wast thou so bold as to

call Lionel thy cousin? for he _is_ a king's son, and of not

a little more worth and gentry than men think." "Lady," said

he, who was right ashamed, "so came the word into my mouth

by adventure that I never took any heed of it." "Now tell

me," said she, "by the faith thou owest me, which thinkest

thou to be the greater gentleman, thyself or him?" "Lady,"

said he, "you have adjured me strongly, for I owe no one

such faith as I owe you, my lady and my mother: nor know I

how much of a gentleman I am by lineage. But, by the faith I

owe you, I would not myself deign to be abashed at that for

which I saw him weep.[46] And they have told me that all men

have sprung from one man and one woman: nor know I for what

reason one has more gentry than another, unless he win it by

prowess, even as lands and other honours. But know you for

very truth that if greatness of heart made a gentleman I

would think yet to be one of the greatest." "Verily, fair

son," said the Lady, "it shall appear. And I say to you that

you lose nothing of being one of the best gentlemen in the

world, if your heart fail you not." "How, Lady!" said he,

"say you this truly, _as_ my lady?" And she said, "Yes,

without fail." "Lady," said he, "blessed be you of God, that

you said it to me so soon [_or_ as soon as you have said

it]. For to that will you make me come which I never thought

to attain. Nor had I so much desire of anything as of

possessing gentry."

[_The first meeting of Lancelot and Guinevere. The Lady of

the Lake has prevailed upon the King to dub Lancelot on St.

John's Day (Midsummer, not Christmas). His protectress

departing, he is committed to the care of Ywain, and a

conversation arises about him. The Queen asks to see him._]

[Sidenote: The first meeting of Lancelot and Guinevere.]

Then bid he [the King] Monseigneur[47] Ywain that he should

go and look for Lancelot. "And let him be equipped as

handsomely as you know is proper: for well know I that he

has plenty." Then the King himself told the Queen how the

Lady of the Lake had requested that he would not make

Lancelot knight save in his own arms and dress. And the

Queen marvelled much at this, and thought long till she saw

him. So Messire Ywain went to the Childe [_vallet_] and had

him clothed and equipped in the best way he could: and when

he saw that nothing could be bettered, he led him to Court

on his own horse, which was right fair. But he brought him

not quietly. For there was so much people about that the

whole street was full: and the news was spread through all

the town that the fair Childe who came yester eve should be

a knight to-morrow, and was now coming to Court in knightly

garb. Then sprang to the windows they of the town, both men

and women. And when they saw him pass they said that never

had they seen so fair a Childe-knight. So he came to the

Court and alighted from his horse: and the news of him

spread through hall and chamber; and knights and dames and

damsels hurried forth. And even the King and the Queen went

to the windows. So when the Childe had dismounted, Messire

Ywain took him by the hand, and led him by it up to the

Hall.

The King and the Queen came to meet him: and both took him

by his two hands and went to seat themselves on a couch:

while the Childe seated himself before them on the fresh

green grass with which the Hall was spread. And the King

gazed on him right willingly: for if he had seemed fair at

his first coming, it was nothing to the beauty that he now

had. And the King thought he had mightily grown in stature

and thews.[48] So the Queen prayed that God might make him a

man of worth, "for right plenty of beauty has He given him,"

and she looked at the Childe very sweetly: and so did he at

her as often as he could covertly direct his eyes towards

her. Also marvelled he much how such great beauty as he saw

appear in her could come: for neither that of his lady, the

Lady of the Lake, nor of any woman that he had ever seen,

did he prize aught as compared with hers. And no wrong had

he if he valued no other lady against the Queen: for she was

the Lady of Ladies and the Fountain of Beauty. But if he had

known the great worthiness that was in her he would have

been still more fain to gaze on her. For none, neither poor

nor rich, was her equal.

So she asked Monseigneur Ywain what was the Childe's name,

and he answered that he knew not. "And know you," said she,

"whose son he is and of what birth?" "Lady," said he, "nay,

except I know so much as that he is of the land of Gaul. For

his speech bewrayeth him."[49] Then the Queen took him by

the hand and asked him of whom he came. And when he felt it

[the touch] he shuddered as though roused from sleep, and

thought of her so hard that he knew not what she said to

him. And she perceived that he was much abashed, and so

asked him a second time, "Tell me whence you come." So he

looked at her very sheepishly and said, with a sigh, that he

knew not. And she asked him what was his name; and he

answered that he knew not that. So now the Queen saw well

that he was abashed and _overthought_.[50] But she dared not

think that it was for her: and nevertheless she had some

suspicion of it, and so dropped the talk. But that she might

not make the disorder of his mind worse, she rose from her

seat and, in order that no one might think any evil or

perceive what she suspected, said that the Childe seemed to

her not very wise, and whether wise or not had been ill

brought up. "Lady," said Messire Ywain, "between you and me,

we know nothing about him: and perchance he is forbidden[51]

to tell his name or who he is." And she said, "It may well

be so," but she said it so low that the Childe heard her

not.

[_Here follows (with a very little surplusage removed

perhaps) the scene which Dante has made world-famous, but

which Malory (I think for reasons) has "cut." I trust it is

neither Philistinism nor perversity which makes me think of

it a little, though only a little, less highly than some

have done. There is (and after all this makes it all the

more interesting for us historians) the least little bit of

anticipation of_ Marivaudage _about it, and less of the

adorable simplicity such as that (a little subsequent to the

last extract given) where Lancelot, having forgotten to take

leave of the Queen on going to his first adventure, and

having returned to do so, kneels to her, receives her hand

to raise him from the ground, "and much was his joy to feel

it bare in his." But the beauty of what follows is

incontestable, and that Guinevere was "exceeding wise in

love" is certain._]

[Sidenote: The scene of the kiss.]

"Ha!" said she then, "I know who you are--Lancelot of the

Lake is your name." And he was silent. "They know it at

court," said she, "this sometime. Messire Gawain was the

first to bring your name there...." Then she asked him why

he had allowed the worst man in the world to lead him by

the bridle. "Lady," said he, "as one who had command neither

of his heart nor of his body." "Now tell me," said she,

"were you at last year's assembly?" "Yes, Lady," said he.

"And what arms did you bear?" "Lady, they were all of

vermilion." "By my head," said she, "you say true. And why

did you do such deeds at the meeting the day before

yesterday?" Then he began to sigh very very deeply. And the

Queen cut him short as well, knowing how it was with him.

"Tell me," she said, "plainly, how it is. I will never

betray you. But I know that you did it for some lady. Now,

tell me, by the faith you owe me, who she is." "Ah, Lady,"

said he, "I see well that it behoves me to speak. Lady, it

is you." "I!" said she. "It was not for me you took the

spears that my maiden brought you. For I took care to put

myself out of the commission." "Lady," said he, "I did for

others what I ought, and for you what I could." "Tell me,

then, for whom have you done all the things that you _have_

done?" "Lady," said he, "for you." "How," said she, "do you

love me so much?" "So much, Lady, as I love neither myself

nor any other." "And since when have you loved me thus?"

"Since the hour when I was called knight and yet was not

one."[52] "Then, by the faith you owe me, whence came this

love that you have set upon me?" Now as the Queen said these

words it happened that the Lady of the Puy of Malahault[53]

coughed on purpose, and lifted her head, which she had held

down. And he understood her now, having oft heard her

before: and looked at her and knew her, and felt in his

heart such fear and anguish that he could not answer the

Queen. Then began he to sigh right deeply, and the tears

fell from his eyes so thick, that the garment he wore was

wet to the knees. And the more he looked at the Lady of

Malahault the more ill at ease was his heart. Now the Queen

noticed this and saw that he looked sadly towards the place

where her ladies were, and she reasoned with him. "Tell me,"

she said, "whence comes this love that I am asking you

about?" and he tried as hard as he could to speak, and said,

"Lady, from the time I have said." "How?" "Lady, you did it,

when you made me your friend, if your mouth lied not." "My

friend?" she said; "and how?" "I came before you when I had

taken leave of my Lord the King all armed except my head and

my hands. And then I commended you to God, and said that,

wherever I was, I was your knight: and you said that you

would have me to be your knight and your friend. And then I

said, 'Adieu, Lady,' and you said, 'Adieu, fair sweet

friend.' And never has that word left my heart, and it is

that word that has made me a good knight and valiant--if I

be so: nor ever have I been so ill-bested as not to remember

that word. That word comforts me in all my annoys. That word

has kept me from all harm, and freed me from all peril, and

fills me whenever I hunger. Never have I been so poor but

that word has made me rich." "By my faith," said the Queen,

"that word was spoken in a good hour, and God be praised

when He made me speak it. Still, I did not set it as high as

you did: and to many a knight have I said it, when I gave no

more thought to the saying. But _your_ thought was no base

one, but gentle and debonair; wherefore joy has come to you

of it, and it has made you a good knight. Yet, nevertheless,

this way is not that of knights who make great matter to

many a lady of many a thing which they have little at heart.

And your seeming shows me that you love one or other of

these ladies better than you love me. For you wept for fear

and dared not look straight at them: so that I well see that

your thought is not so much of me as you pretend. So, by the

faith you owe the thing you love best in the world, tell me

which one of the three you love so much?" "Ah! Lady," said

he, "for the mercy of God, as God shall keep me, never had

one of them my heart in her keeping." "This will not do,"

said the Queen, "you cannot dissemble. For many another such

thing have I seen, and I know that your heart is there as

surely as your body is here." And this she said that she

might well see how she might put him ill at ease. For she

thought surely enough that he meant no love save to her, or

ill would it have gone on the day of the Black Arms.[54] And

she took a keen delight in seeing and considering his

discomfort. But he was in such anguish that he wanted little

of swooning, save that fear of the ladies before him kept

him back. And the Queen herself perceived it at the sight of

his changes of colour, and caught him by the shoulder that

he might not fall, and called to Galahault. Then the prince

sprang forward and ran to his friend, and saw that he was

disturbed thus, and had great pain in his own heart for it,

and said, "Ah, Lady! tell me, for God's sake, what has

happened." And the Queen told him the conversation. "Ah,

Lady!" said Galahault, "mercy, for God's sake, or you may

lose me him by such wrath, and it would be too great pity."

"Certes," said she, "that is true. But know you why he has

done such feats of arms?" "Nay, surely, Lady," said he.

"Sir," said she, "if what he tells me is true, it was for

me." "Lady," said he, "as God shall keep me, I can believe

it. For just as he is more valiant than other men, so is

his heart truer than all theirs." "Verily," said she, "you

would say well that he is valiant if you knew what deeds he

has done since he was made knight," and then she told him

all the chivalry of Lancelot ... and how he had done it all

for a single word of hers [_Galahault tells her more, and

begs mercy for L._]. "He could ask me nothing," sighed she,

"that I could fairly refuse him, but he will ask me nothing

at all."... "Lady," said Galahault, "certainly he has no

power to do so. For one loves nothing that one does not

fear." [_And then comes the immortal kiss, asked by the

Prince, delayed a moment by the Queen's demur as to time and

place, brought on by the "Galeotto"-speech._ "Let us three

corner close together as if we were talking secrets,"

_vouchsafed by Guinevere in the words_, "Why should I make

me longer prayer for what I wish more than you or he?"

_Lancelot still hangs back, but the Queen_ "takes him by the

chin and kisses him before Galahault with a kiss long

enough" so that the Lady of Malahault knows it.] And then

said the Queen, who was a right wise and gracious lady,

"Fair sweet friend, so much have you done that I am yours,

and right great joy have I thereof. Now see to it that the

thing be kept secret, as it should be. For I am one of the

ladies of the world who have the fairest fame, and if my

praise grew worse through you, then it would be a foul and

shameful thing."

[Sidenote: Some further remarks on the novel character of the story.]

A little more comment on this cento, and especially on the central

passage of it, can hardly be, and ought certainly not to be, avoided in

such a work as this, even if, like most summaries, it be something of a

repetition. It must surely be obvious to any careful reader that here is

something much more than--unless his reading has been as wide elsewhere

as it is careful here--he expected from Romance in the commoner and

half-contemptuous acceptation of that word. Lancelot he may, though he

should not, still class as a mere _amoureux transi_--a nobler and

pluckier Silvius in an earlier _As Yon Like It_, and with a greater than

Phoebe for idol. Malory ought to be enough to set him right there: he

need even not go much beyond Tennyson, who has comprehended Lancelot

pretty correctly, if not indeed pretty adequately. But Malory has left

out a great deal of the information which would have enabled his

readers to comprehend Guinevere; and Tennyson, only presenting her in

parts, has allowed those parts, especially the final and only full

presentation, great as it is, to be too much influenced by his certainly

unfortunate other presentation of Arthur as a blameless king.

I do not say that the actual creator of the Vulgate Guinevere, whoever

he was, has wrought her into a novel-character of the first class. It

would have been not merely a miracle (for miracles often happen), but

something more, if he had. If you could take Beatrix Esmond at a better

time, Argemone Lavington raised to a higher power, and the spirit of all

that is best and strongest and least purely paradoxical in Meredith's

heroines, and work these three graces into one woman, adding the passion

of Tennyson's own Fatima and the queenliness of Helen herself, it might

be something like the achieved Guinevere who is still left to the

reader's imagination to achieve. But the Unknown has given the hints of

all this; and curiously enough it is only of _English_ novel-heroines

that I can think in comparison and continuation of her. This book, if it

is ever finished, will show, I hope, some knowledge of French ones: I

can remember none possessing any touch of Guineveresque quality. Dante,

if his poetic nature had taken a different bent, and Shakespeare, if he

had only chosen, could have been her portrayers singly; no others that I

can think of, and certainly no Frenchman.

[Sidenote: And the personages.]

But here Guinevere's creator or expounder has done more for her than

merely indicate her charm. Her "fear for name and fame" is not exactly

"crescent"--it is there from the first, and seems to have nothing either

cowardly or merely selfish in it, but only that really "last infirmity

of noble minds," the shame of shame even in doing things shameful or

shameless. I have seldom seen justice done to her magnificent

fearlessness in all her dangers. Her graciousness as a Queen has been

more generally admitted, but, once again, the composition and complexity

of her fits of jealousy have never, I think, been fully rationalised.

Here, once more, we must take into account that difference of age which

is so important. _He_ thinks nothing of it; _she_ never forgets it. And

in almost all the circumstances where this rankling kindles into

wrath--whether with no cause at all, as in most cases, or with cause

more apparent than real, as in the Elaine business--study of particulars

will show how easily they might be wrought out into the great character

scenes of which they already contain the suggestion. _This_ Guinevere

would never have "taken up" (to use purposely a vulgar phrase for what

would have been a vulgar thing) with Mordred,[55] either for himself or

for the kingdom that he was trying to steal. And I am bound to say again

that much as I have read of purely French romance--that is to say,

French not merely in language but in certain origin--I know nothing and

nobody like her in it.

That Guinevere, like Charlotte, was "a married lady," that, unlike

Charlotte, she forgot the fact, and that Lancelot, though somewhat

Wertheresque in some of his features, was not quite so "moral" as that

very dull young man, are facts which I wish neither to suppress nor to

dwell upon. We may cry "Agreed" here to the indictment, and all its

consequences. They are not the question.

The question is the suggesting of novel-romance elements which forms the

aesthetic solace of this ethical sin. It should be seen at once that the

Guinevere of the Vulgate, and her fault or fate, provide a character and

career of no small complexity. It has been already said that to

represent her as after a fashion intercepted by love for Lancelot on her

way to Arthur, like Iseult of Ireland or Margaret of Anjou, is, so to

speak, as unhistorical as it is insufficiently artistic. We cannot,

indeed, borrow Diderot's speech to Rousseau and say, "C'est le pont aux

anes," but it certainly would not have been the way of the Walter whom I

favour, though I think it might have been the way of the Chrestien that

I know. Guinevere, when she meets her lover, rescuer, and doomsman, is

no longer a girl, and Lancelot is almost a boy. It is not, in the common

and cheap misuse of the term, the most "romantic" arrangement, but some

not imperfect in love-lore have held that a woman's love is never so

strong as when she is past girlhood and well approaching age, and that

man's is never stronger than when he is just not a boy. Lancelot himself

has loved no woman (except his quasi-mother, the Lady of the Lake), and

will love none after he has fulfilled the Dead Shepherd's "saw of

might." She _has_ loved; dispute this and you not only cancel gracious

scenes of the text, but spoil the story; but she has, though probably

she does not yet know it, ceased to love,[56] and not without some

reason. To say no more about Arthur's technical "blamelessness," he has,

by the coming of Lancelot, ceased to be altogether heroic. Though never

a mere petulant and ferocious dotard as the _Chansons_ too often

represent Charlemagne, he is very far from being a wise ruler or even

baron. He makes rash promises and vows, accepts charges on very slight

evidence, and seems to have his knights by no means "in hand." So, too,

though never a coward or weakling, he seems pretty nearly to have lost

the pluck and prowess which had won Guinevere's love under the walls of

Carmelide, and of which the last display is in the great fight with his

sister's lover, Sir Accolon. All this may not excuse Guinevere's conduct

to the moralist; it certainly makes that conduct artistically probable

and legitimate to the critic, as a foundation for novel-character.

Her lover may look less promising, at least at the moment of

presentation; and indeed it is true that while "la donna e _im_mobile,"

in essentials and possibilities alike, forms of man, though never losing

reality and possibility, pass at times out of possible or at least easy

recognition. Anybody who sees in the Lancelot of the foregoing scene

only a hobbledehoy and milksop who happens to have a big chest, strong

arms, and plenty of mere fighting spirit, will never grasp him. Hardly

better off will be he who takes him--as the story _does_ give some

handles for taking him--to be merely one of the too common examples of

humanity who sin and repent, repent and sin, with a sort of

Americanesque notion of spending dollars in this world and laying them

up in another. Malory has on the whole done more justice to the

possibilities of the Vulgate Lancelot than he has to Guinevere, and

Tennyson has here improved on Malory. He has, indeed, very nearly "got"

Lancelot, but not quite. To get him wholly would have required Tennyson

for form and Browning for analysis of character; while even this

_mistura mirabilis_ would have been improved for the purpose by touches

not merely of Morris and Swinburne, but of lesser men like Kingsley and

even George Macdonald. To understand Lancelot you must previously

understand, or by some kind of intuition divine, the mystical element

which his descent from the Graal-Wardens confers; the essential or

quintessential chivalric quality which his successive creators agreed in

imparting to him; the all-conquering gift so strangely tempered by an

entire freedom from the boasting and the rudeness of the _chanson_ hero;

the actual checks and disasters which his cross stars bring on him; his

utter loyalty in all things save one to the king; and last and mightiest

of all, his unquenchable and unchangeable passion for the Queen.

Hence what they said to him in one of his early adventures, with no

great ill following, "Fair Knight, thou art unhappy," was always true in

a higher sense. He may have been Lord of Joyous Gard, in title and fact;

but his own heart was always a Garde Douloureuse--a _cor

luctificabile_--pillowed on idle triumphs and fearful hopes and

poisoned satisfactions, and bafflements where he would most fain have

succeeded. He has almost had to have the first kiss forced on him; he is

refused the last on grounds of which he himself cannot deny the

validity. Guinevere is a tragic figure in the truest and deepest sense

of the term, and, as we have tried to show, she is amply complex in

character and temperament. But it is questionable whether Lancelot is

not more tragic and more complex still.

[Sidenote: Books.]

It may perhaps without impropriety be repeated that these are not mere

fancies of the writer, but things reasonably suggested by and solidly

based upon "the French books," when these later are collated and, so to

speak, "checked" by Malory and the romances of adventure branching off

from them. But Arthur and Guinevere and Lancelot by no means exhaust the

material for advanced and complicated novel-work--in character as well

as incident--provided by the older forms of the Legend. There is Gawain,

who has to be put together from the sort of first draft of Lancelot

which he shows in the earlier versions, and the light-o'-love opposite

which he becomes in the later, a contrast continued in the Amadis and

Galaor figures of the Spanish romances and their descendants. There is

the already glanced at group of Arthur's sisters or half-sisters, left

mere sketches and hints, but most interesting. Not to be tedious, we

need not dwell on Palomides, a very promising Lancelot unloved; on

Lamoracke, left provokingly obscure, but shadowing a most important

possibility in the unwritten romance of one of those very sisters; Bors,

of whom Tennyson has made something, but not enough, in the later

_Idylls_; and others. But it is probably unnecessary to carry the

discussion of this matter further. It has been discussed and illustrated

at some length, because it shows how early the elements, not merely of

romance but of the novel in the fullest sense, existed in French

literature.

[_Here follows the noble passage above referred to between

Lancelot and King Bagdemagus after the death of

Meleagraunce, whose cousin Lancelot has just slain in

single combat for charging him with treason. He has kept his

helm on, but doffs it at the King's request._]

And when the King saw him he ran to kiss him, and began to make such joy

of him as none could overgo. But Lancelot said, "Ah, Sir! for God's

sake, make no joy or feast for me. Certainly you should make none, for

if you knew the evil I have done you, you would hate me above all men in

the world." "Oh! Lancelot," said he, "tell it me not, for I

understand[57] too well what you would say; but I will know[57] nothing

of it, because it might be such a thing" as would part them for ever.

FOOTNOTES:

[14] The subdivision of the _gestes_ does not matter: they were all

connected closely or loosely--except the Crusading section, and even

that falls under the Christian _v._ Saracen grouping if not under the

Carlovingian. The real "outside" members are few, late, and in almost

every case unimportant.

[15] There are comic _episodes_ elsewhere; but almost the whole of this

poem turns on the _gabz_ or burlesque boasts of the paladins.--It may be

wise here to anticipate an objection which may be taken to these remarks

on the _chansons_. I have been asked whether I know M. Bedier's handling

of them; and, by an odd coincidence, within a few hours of the question

I saw an American statement that this excellent scholar's researches

"have revised our conceptions" of the matter. No one can exceed me in

respect for perhaps the foremost of recent scholars in Old French. But

my "conception" of the _chansons_ was formed long before he wrote, not

from that of any of his predecessors, but from the _chansons_

themselves. It is therefore not subject to "revisal" except from my own

re-reading, and such re-reading has only confirmed it.

[16] It is not of course intended to be preferred to the far more widely

known tale in which the heroine bears the same name, and which will be

mentioned below. But if it is less beautiful such beauty as it has is

free from the slightest _morbidezza_.

[17] And to this introduction our dealings with it here may be confined.

The accounts of the siege itself are of much less interest, especially

in connection with our special subject.

[18] A sort of companion handbook to the first part of this volume will

be found in the present writer's sketch of twelfth and thirteenth

century European literature, under the title of _The Flourishing of

Romance and the Rise of Allegory_, in Messrs. Blackwood's _Periods of

European Literature_ (Edinburgh and London, 1897), and another in his

_Short History of French Literature_ (Oxford, 7th ed. at press).

[19] It is scarcely rash to say that Cressid is the first representative

of this dread and delightful entity, and the ancestress of all its

embodiments since in fiction, as Cleopatra seems to have been in

history. No doubt "it" was of the beginning, but it lacked its _vates_.

Helen was different.

[20] _Faerie Queene_, v. iv. 1-20.

[21] I hope I may be allowed to emphasise the disclaimer, which I have

already made more than once elsewhere, of the very slightest disrespect

to this admirable scholar. The presumption and folly of such disrespect

would be only inferior to its ingratitude, for the indulgence with which

M. Paris consistently treated my own somewhat rash adventures in Old

French was extraordinary. But as one's word is one's word so one's

opinion is one's opinion.

[22] Sometimes _de_, but _a_ seems more analogical.

[23] Chrestien was rather like Chaucer in being apt not to finish. Even

the _Charette_ owes its completion (in an extent not exactly

determinable) to a certain Godfrey de Lagny (Laigny, etc.).

[24] Of course it is easy enough to assign explanations of it, from the

vehicle of criminals to the scaffold downwards; but it remains a

convention--very much of the same kind as that which ordains (or used to

ordain) that a gentleman may not carry a parcel done up in newspaper,

though no other form of wrapping really stains his honour.

[25] Neither he nor Malory gives one of the most gracious parts of

it--the interview between Lancelot and King Bagdemagus, _v. inf._ p. 54.

[26] Material (chamois skin)? or garment? Not common in O.F., I think,

for _camisia_; but Spenser (_Faerie Queene_, II. iii. xxvi.) has (as

Prof. Gregory Smith reminds me) "a silken _camus_ lilly whight."

[27] As does Pyramus's--or Bottom's--objection to the wall.

[28] This part of the matter has received too little attention in modern

studies of the subject: partly because it was clumsily handled by some

of the probably innumerable and certainly undiscoverable meddlers with

the Vulgate. The unpopularity of Lancelot and his kin is not due merely

to his invincibility and their not always discreet partisanship. The

older "Queen's knights" must have naturally felt her devotion to him;

his "undependableness"--in consequence not merely of his fits of madness

but of his chivalrously permissible but very inconvenient habit of

disguising himself and taking the other side--must have annoyed the

whole Table. Yet these very things, properly managed, help to create and

complicate the "novel" character. For one of the most commonly and not

the least justly charged faults of the average romance is its deficiency

in combined plot and character-interest--the presence in it, at most, of

a not too well-jointed series of episodes, possibly leading to a death

or a marriage, but of little more than chronicle type. This fault has

been exaggerated, but it exists. Now it will be one main purpose of the

pages which follow to show that there is, in the completed Arthuriad,

something quite different from and far beyond this--something perhaps

imperfectly realised by any one writer, and overlaid and disarranged by

the interpolations or misinterpretations of others, but still a "mind"

at work that keeps the "mass" alive, and may, or rather surely will,

quicken it yet further and into higher forms hereafter. (Those who know

will not, I hope, be insulted if I mention for the benefit of those who

do not, that the term "Vulgate" is applied to those forms of the parts

of the story which, with slighter or more important variations, are

common to many MSS. The term itself is most specially applied to the

_Lancelot_ which, in consequence of this popularity throughout the later

Middle Ages, actually got itself printed early in the French

Renaissance. The whole has been (or is being) at last most fortunately

reprinted by Dr. Sommer. See Bibliography.)

[29] This is another point which, not, I suppose, having been clearly

and completely evolved by the first handler, got messed and muddled by

successive copyists and continuators. In what seems to be the oldest,

and is certainly the most consistent and satisfactory, story there is

practically nothing evil about Viviane--Nimiane--Nimue, who is also

indisputably identical with the foster-mother of Lancelot, the

occasional Egeria (always for good) of Arthur himself, and the

benefactress (this is probably a later addition though in the right key)

of Sir Pelleas. For anybody who possesses the Power of the Sieve she

remains as Milton saw her, and not as Tennyson mis-saw part of her. The

bewitching of Merlin (who, let it be remembered, was an ambiguous person

in several ways, and whose magic, if never exactly black, was sometimes

a rather greyish or magpied white) was not an unmixed loss to the world;

she seems to have really loved him, and to have faithfully kept her word

by being with him often. He "could not get out" certainly, but are there

many more desirable things in the outside world than lying with your

head in the lap of the Lady of the Lake while she caresses and talks to

you? "J'en connais des plus malheureux" as the French poet observed of

some one in less delectable case. The author of the _Suite de Merlin_

seems to have been her first maligner. Tennyson, seduced by contrast,

followed and exaggerated the worst view. But I am not sure that the most

"irreligious" thing (as Coleridge would have said) was not the

transformation of her into a mere married lady (with a chateau in

Brittany, and an ordinary knight for her husband) which astounds us in

one of the dullest parts of the Vulgate about Lancelot--the wars with

Claudas.

[30] I have always thought that Spenser (whose dealings with Arthuriana

are very curious, and have never, I think, been fully studied) took this

function of Lancelot to suggest the presentation of his Arthur. But

Lancelot has no--at least no continuous--fairy aid; he is not invariably

victorious, and he is thoroughly human. Spenser's Prince began the

"blamelessness" which grew more trying still in Tennyson's King. (In the

few remarks of this kind made here I am not, I need hardly say, "going

back upon" my lifelong estimate of Tennyson as an almost impeccable

poet. But an impeccable poet is not necessarily an impeccable plot- and

character-monger either in tale-telling or in drama.)

[31] Of this we have unusually strong evidence in the shape of MS.

interlineations, where the name "Percevale" is actually struck out and

that of "Gala[h]ad" substituted above it.

[32] I do not say that this is their _only_ character.

[33] Brittany had much earlier and much more tradition of chivalry than

Wales.

[34] The only fault alleged against Lancelot's person by carpers was

that he was something "pigeon"--or "guardsman"--chested. But Guinevere

showed her love and her wit, and her "valiancy" (for so at least on this

occasion we may translate _vaillant_) by retorting that such a chest was

only big enough--and hardly big enough--for such a heart.

[35] Some of the later "redactors" of the Vulgate may perhaps have

unduly multiplied his madnesses, and have exaggerated his early shyness

a little. But I am not sure of the latter point. It is not only "beasts"

that, as in the great Theocritean place, "go timidly because they fear

Cythera"; and a love charged with such dread consequences was not to be

lightly embarked upon.

[36] The early _Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere_, though only external,

is perfect. Many touches in the _Idylls_ other than the title-one are

suitable and even subtle; but the convertite in that one is (as they say

now) "unconvincing." The simpler attitude of the rejection of Lancelot

in the verse _Morte_ and in Malory is infinitely better. As for Morris's

two pieces, they could hardly be better in themselves as poems--but they

are scarcely great on the novel side.

[37] Disagreeable, that is to say, as a sister and sister-in-law. There

must have been something attractive about her in other relations.

[38] Compare one of the not so very many real examples of Ibsen's

vaunted psychology, the placid indifference to her own past of Gina in

the _Wild Duck_.

[39] He had said that if he were a woman he would give Lancelot anything

he asked; and the Queen, following, observes that Gawain had left

nothing for a woman to say.

[40] _Nos passions ont quelque chose d'infini_, says Bossuet.

[41] [Greek: helandros, heleptolis]. She had no opportunity of being

[Greek: helenaus].

[42] Hawker's security as to Cornish men and things is, I admit, a

little Bardolphian. But did he not write about the Quest? (This sort of

argument simply swarms in Arthurian controversy; so I may surely use it

once.) Besides there is no doubt about the blueness of the sea in

question; though Anthony Trollope, in _Malachi's Cove_, has most falsely

and incomprehensibly denied it.

[43] That this is a real sign of decadence and unoriginality, the

further exaggeration of it in the case of the knights of the _Amadis_

cycle proves almost to demonstration.

[44] After the opening sentence I have dropped the historic present,

which, for a continuance, is very irritating in English.

[45] Lancelot himself has told us earlier (_op. cit._ i. 38) that,

though he neither knew nor thought himself to be a king's son, he was

commonly addressed as such.

[46] Lionel (very young at the time) had wept because some one mentioned

the loss of his inheritance, and Lancelot (young as he too was) had

bidden him not cry for fear of landlessness. "There would be plenty for

him, if he had heart to gain it."

[47] This technical title is usually if not invariably given to Ywain

and Gawain as eldest sons of recognised kings. "Prince" is not used in

this sense by the older Romancers, but only for distinguished knights

like Galahault, who is really a king.

[48] There is one admirable word here, _enbarnis_, which has so long

been lost to French that it is not even in Littre. But Dryden's

"_burnish_ into man" probably preserves it in English; for this is

certainly not the other "burnish" from _brunir_.

[49] "Car moult en parole diroit la parole."

[50] Puzzled by the number of new thoughts and emotions.

[51] Ywain suggests one of the commonest things in Romance.

[52] Arthur had, by a set of chances, not actually girded on Lancelot's

sword.

[53] Whose prisoner Lancelot had been, who had been ready to fall in

love with him, and to whom he had expressly refused to tell his own

love. Hence his confusion.

[54] The day when Lancelot, at her request, had turned against the side

of his friend Galahault and brought victory to Arthur's.

[55] By the way, the Vulgate Mordred is a more subtle conception than

the early stories gave, or than Malory transfers. He is no mere traitor

or felon knight, much less a coward, from the first; but at that first

shows a mixture of good and bad qualities in which the "dram of eale"

does its usual office. Here once more is a subject made to the hand of a

novelist of the first class.

[56] Some poet or pundit, whether of East or West, or of what place,

from Santiago to Samarcand, I know not, has laid it down, that men can

love many, but without ceasing to love any; that women love only one at

once, but can (to borrow, at fifty years' memory, a phrase of George

Lawrence's in _Sans Merci_) "drop their lovers down _oubliettes_" with

comparative ease.

[57] It is excusable to use two words for the single verb _savoir_ to

bring out the meaning. King Bagdemagus does not "know" as a fact that

Lancelot has slain his son, though he fears it and feels almost sure of

it.