Now begins the Couronnement Loys, of which the more detailed abstract given above may serve, not merely to make the individual piece known, but to indicate the general course, incidents, language, and so forth of all these poems. It will be remembered that it ends by a declaration that the king was not grateful to the King-maker. He forgets William in the distribution of fiefs, says M. Gautier; we may say, perhaps, that he remembers rather too vividly the rough instruction he has received from his brother-in-law. On protest William receives Spain, Orange, and Nîmes, a sufficiently magnificent dotation, were it not that all three are in the power of the infidels. William, however, loses no time in putting himself in possession, and begins with Nîmes. This he carries, as told in the Charroi de Nîmes,[38] by the Douglas-like stratagem (indeed it is not at all impossible that the Good Lord James was acquainted with the poem) of hiding his knights in casks, supposed to contain salt and other merchandise, which are piled on cars and drawn by oxen. William himself and Bertrand his nephew conduct the caravan, dressed in rough boots (which hurt Bertrand's feet), blue hose, and coarse cloth frocks. The innocent paynims give them friendly welcome, though William is nearly discovered by his tell-tale disfigurement. A squabble, however, arises; but William, having effected his entrance, does not lose time. He blows his horn, and the knights springing from their casks, the town is taken. This Charroi de Nîmes is one of the most spirited, but one of the roughest, of the group. The catalogue of his services with which William overwhelms the king, each item ushered by the phrase "Rois, quar te membre" ("King, bethink thee then"), and to which the unfortunate Louis can only answer in various forms, "You are very ill-tempered" ("Pleins es de mautalent"; "Mautalent avez moult"), is curiously full of uncultivated eloquence; while his refusal to accept the heritage of Auberi le Bourgoing, and thereby wrong Auberi's little son, even though "sa marrastre Hermengant de Tori" is also offered by the generous monarch with the odd commendation—

is justly praised. But when the venerable Aymon not unnaturally protests against almost the whole army accompanying William, and the wrathful peer breaks his jaw with his fist, when the peasants who grumble at their casks and their oxen being seized are hanged or have their eyes put out—then the less amiable side of the matter certainly makes its appearance.

William has thus entered on part, though the least part, of the king's gift to him—a gift which it is fair to Louis to say that the hero had himself demanded, after refusing the rather vague offer of a fourth of the lands and revenues of all France. The Prise d'Orange[39] follows in time and as a subject of chanson, the Charroi de Nîmes. The earlier poem had been all sheer fighting with no softer side. In this William is reminded of the beautiful Orable (wife, if only in name, of King Thibaut), who lives there, though her husband, finding a wife who bewitches the nuptial chamber unsatisfactory, has left her and Orange to the care of his son Arragon. The reminder is a certain Gilbert of Vermandois who has been prisoner at Orange, and who, after some hesitation, joins William himself and his brother Guibelin in a hazardous expedition to the pagan city. They blacken themselves with ink, and are not ill received by Arragon: but a Saracen who knows the "Marquis au Court Nez" informs against him (getting his brains beaten out for his pains), and the three, forcing a way with bludgeons through the heathen, take refuge in Gloriette, receive arms from Orable, who has never ceased to love the Marquis, and drive their enemies off. But a subterranean passage (this probably shows the chanson to be a late one in this form) lets the heathen in: and all three champions are seized, bound, and condemned to the flames. Orable demands them, not to release but to put in her own dungeons, conveniently furnished with vipers; and for a time they think themselves betrayed. But Orable soon appears, offers them liberty if William will marry her, and discloses a second underground passage. They do not, however, fly by this, but only send Gilbert to Nîmes to fetch succour: and as Orable's conduct is revealed to Arragon, a third crisis occurs. It is happily averted, and Bertrand soon arriving with thirteen thousand men from Nîmes, the Saracens are cut to pieces and Orange won. Orable is quickly baptised, her name being changed to Guibourc, and married without further delay. William is William of Orange at length in good earnest, and the double sacrament reconciles M. Gautier (who is constantly distressed by the forward conduct of his heroines) to Guibourc ever afterwards. It is only fair to say that in the text published by M. Jonckbloët (and M. Gautier gives references to no other) "la curtoise Orable" does not seem to deserve his hard words. There is nothing improper in her conduct, and her words do not come to much more than—

La Prise d'Orange ends with the couplet—

Orange, in short, was a kind of Garde Douloureuse against the infidel: and William well earned his title of "Marchis." The story of his exploits diverges a little—a loop rather than an episode—in two specially heroic chansons, the Enfances Vivien and the Covenant Vivien,[40] which tell the story of one of his nephews, a story finished by Vivien's glorious death at the opening of the great chanson of Aliscans. Vivien is the son of Garin d'Ansène, one of those "children of Aimeri" who have sought fortune away from Narbonne, and one of the captives of Roncesvalles. Garin is only to be delivered at the cost of his son's life, which Vivien cheerfully offers. He is actually on the pyre, which is kindled, when the pagan hold Luiserne is stormed by a pirate king, and Vivien is rescued, but sold as a slave. An amiable paynim woman buys him and adopts him; but he is a born knight, and when grown up, with a few allies surprises Luiserne itself, and holds it till a French army arrives, and Garin recovers his son, whom he had thought dead. After these Enfances, promising enough, comes the Covenant or vow, never to retreat before the Saracens. Vivien is as savage as he is heroic; and on one occasion sends five hundred prisoners, miserably mutilated, to the great Admiral Desramé. The admiral assembles all the forces of the East as well as of Spain, and invades France. Vivien, overpowered by numbers, applies to his uncle William for help, and the battle of Aliscans is already half fought and more than half lost before the actual chanson of the name begins. Aliscans[41] itself opens with a triplet in which the "steel clash" of the chanson measure is more than ever in place:—

And it continues in the same key. The commentators declare that the story refers to an actual historical battle of Villedaigne. This may be a fact: the literary excellence of Aliscans is one. The scale of the battle is represented as being enormous: and the poet is not unworthy of his subject. Neither is William impar sibi: but his day of unbroken victory is over. No one can resist him personally; but the vast numbers of the Saracens make personal valour useless. Vivien, already hopelessly wounded, fights on, and receives a final blow from a giant. He is able, however, to drag himself to a tree where a fountain flows, and there makes his confession, and prays for his uncle's safety. As for William himself, his army is entirely cut to pieces, and it is only a question whether he can possibly escape. He comes to Vivien's side just as his nephew is dying, bewails him in a very noble passage, receives his last breath, and is able before it passes to administer the holy wafer which he carries with him. It is Vivien's first communion as well as his last.

After this really great scene, one of the finest in all the chansons, William puts the corpse of Vivien on the wounded but still generous Baucent, and endeavours to make his way through the ring of enemies who have held aloof but are determined not to let him go. Night saves him: and though he has to abandon the body, he cuts his way through a weak part of the line, gains another horse (for Baucent can carry him no longer), and just reaches Orange. But he has taken the arms as well as the horse of a pagan to get through his foes: and in this guise he is refused entrance to his own city. Guibourc herself rejects him, and only recognises her husband from the prowess which he shows against the pursuers, who soon catch him up. The gates are opened and he is saved, but Orange is surrounded by the heathen. There is no room to tell the full heroism of Guibourc, and, besides, Aliscans is one of the best known of the chansons, and has been twice printed.

From this point the general interest of the saga, which has culminated in the battle of Aliscans, though it can hardly be said to disappear, declines somewhat, and is diverted to other persons than William himself. It is decided that Guibourc shall hold Orange, while he goes to the Court of Louis to seek aid. This personal suit is necessary lest the fulness of the overthrow be not believed; and the pair part after a scene less rugged than the usual course of the chansons, in which Guibourc expresses her fear of the "damsels bright of blee," the ladies of high lineage that her husband will meet at Laon; and William swears in return to drink no wine, eat no flesh, kiss no mouth, sleep on his saddle-cloth, and never change his garments till he meets her again.

His reception is not cordial. Louis thinks him merely a nuisance, and the courtiers mock his poverty, distress, and loneliness. He meets with no hospitality save from a citizen. But the chance arrival of his father and mother from Narbonne prevents him from doing anything rash. They have a great train with them, and it is no longer possible simply to ignore William; but from the king downwards, there is great disinclination to grant him succour, and Queen Blanchefleur is especially hostile. William is going to cut her head off—his usual course of action when annoyed—after actually addressing her in a speech of extreme directness, somewhat resembling Hamlet's to Gertrude, but much ruder. Their mother saves Blanchefleur, and after she has fled in terror to her chamber, the fair Aelis, her daughter, a gracious apparition, begs and obtains forgiveness from William, short of temper as of nose, but also not rancorous. Reconciliation takes place all round, and an expedition is arranged for the relief of Orange. It is successful, but chiefly owing to the prowess, not of William, but of a certain Renouart, who is the special hero, not merely of the last half of Aliscans, but of nearly all the later chansons of the geste of Garin de Montglane. This Renouart or Rainouart is an example, and one of the earliest, perhaps the very earliest, of the type of hero, so dear to the middle ages, who begins by service in the kitchen or elsewhere, of no very dignified character, and ends by being discovered to be of noble or royal birth. Rainouart is thus the ancestor, and perhaps the direct ancestor, of Havelok, whom he especially resembles; of Beaumains, in a hitherto untraced episode of the Arthurian story, and of others. His early feats against the Saracens, in defence of Orange first, and then when William arrives, are made with no knightly weapon, but with a tinel—huge bludgeon, beam, "caber"—but he afterwards turns out to be Guibourc's, or rather Orable's, own brother. There are very strong comic touches in all this part of the poem, such as the difficulty Rainouart finds in remounting his comrades, the seven nephews of William, because his tinel blows are so swashing that they simply smash horse and man—a difficulty overcome by the ingenious suggestion of Bertrand that he shall hit with the small end. And these comic touches have a little disturbed those who wish to find in the pure chanson de geste nothing but war and religion, honour and generosity. But, as has been already hinted, this is to be over-nice. No doubt the oldest existing, or at least the oldest yet discovered, MS. of Aliscans is not the original, for it is rhymed, not assonanced, a practically infallible test. But there is no reason to suppose that the comic touches are all new, though they may have been a little amplified in the later version. Once more, it is false argument to evolve the idea of a chanson from Roland only, and then to insist that all chansons shall conform to it.

After the defeat of Desramé, and the relief of half-ruined Orange, the troubles of that city and its Count are not over. The admiral returns to the charge, and the next chanson, the Bataille Loquifer, is ranked by good judges as ancient, and describes fresh prowess of Rainouart. Then comes the Moniage ["Monking" of] Rainouart, in which the hero, like so many other heroes, takes the cowl. This, again, is followed by a series describing chiefly the reprisals in Spain and elsewhere of the Christians—Foulques de Candie, the Siège de Barbastre, the Prise de Cordres, and Gilbert d'Andrenas. And at last the whole geste is wound up by the Mort Aimeri de Narbonne, Renier, and the Moniage Guillaume, the poem which unites the profane history of the Marquis au Court Nez to the legend of St William of the Desert, though in a fashion sometimes odd. M. Gautier will not allow any of these poems (except the Bataille Loquifer and the two Moniages) great age; and even if it were otherwise, and more of them were directly accessible,[42] there could be no space to say much of them here. The sketch given should be sufficient to show the general characteristics of the chansons as each is in itself, and also the curious and ingenious way in which their successive authors have dovetailed and pieced them together into continuous family chronicles.

If these delights can move any one, they may be found almost universally distributed about the chansons. Of the minor groups the most interesting and considerable are the crusading cycle, late as it is in part, and that of the Lorrainers, which is, in the main, very early. Of the former the Chansons d'Antioche and de Jérusalem are almost historical, and are pretty certainly based on the account of an actual partaker. Antioche in particular has few superiors in the whole hundred and more poems of the kind. Hélias ties this historic matter on to legend proper by introducing the story of the Knight of the Swan; while Les Chétifs (The Captives) combines history and legend very interestingly, starting as it does with a probably historical capture of certain Christians, who are then plunged in dreamland of romance for the rest of it. The concluding poems of this cycle, Baudouin de Sebourc and the Bastart de Bouillon, have been already more than once mentioned. They show, as has been said, the latest form of the chanson, and are almost pure fiction, though they have a sort of framework or outline in the wars in Northern Arabia, at and round the city of Jôf, whose crusading towers still, according to travellers, look down on the hadj route through the desert. Garin le Loherain, on the other hand, and its successors, are pure early feudal fighting, as is also the early, excellent, and very characteristic Raoul de Cambrai. These are instances, and no doubt not the only ones, of what may be called district or provincial gestes, applying the principles of the chansons generally to local quarrels and fortunes.

Of what purists call the sophisticated chansons, those in which general romance-motives of different kinds are embroidered on the strictly chanson canvas, there are probably none more interesting than the later forms of Huon de Bordeaux and Ogier de Danemarche. The former, since the fortunate reprinting of Lord Berners's version by the Early English Text Society, is open to every one, though, of course, the last vestiges of chanson form have departed, and those who can should read it as edited in M. Guessard's series. The still more gracious legend, in which the ferocious champion Ogier, after his early triumphs over the giant Caraheu and against the paladins of Charles, is, like Huon, brought to the loadstone rock, is then subjected to the enchantments—loving, and now not baneful—of Arthur's sister Morgane, and tears himself from fairyland to come to the rescue of France, is by far the most delightful of the attempts to "cross" the Arthurian and Carlovingian cycles. And of this we fortunately have in English a poetical version from the great trouvère among the poets of our day, the late Mr William Morris. Of yet others, the often-mentioned Voyage à Constantinoble, with its rather unseemly gabz (boasting jests of the peers, which are overheard by the heathen emperor with results which seem like at one time to be awkward), is among the oldest, and is a warning against the tendency to take the presence of comic elements as a necessary evidence of late date. Les Saisnes, dealing with the war against the Saxons, is a little loose in its morals, but vigorous and interesting. The pleasant pair of Aiol and Elie de St Gilles; the touching history of Charlemagne's mother, Berte aus grans Piés; Acquin, one of the rare chansons dealing with Brittany (though Roland was historically count thereof); Gérard de Roussillon, which has more than merely philological interest; Macaire, already mentioned; the famous Quatre Fils d'Aymon, longest and most widely popular, must be added to the list, and are not all that should be added to it.

On the whole, I must repeat that the chansons de geste, which as we have them are the work of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in the main, form the second division in point of literary value of early mediæval literature, while they possess, in a certain "sincerity and strength," qualities not to be found even in the Arthurian story itself. Despite the ardour with which they have been philologically studied for nearly three-quarters of a century, despite (or perhaps because of) the enthusiasm which one or two devotees have shown for their literary qualities, it does not seem to me that fair justice, or anything like it, has yet been generally done. German critics care little for literary merit, and are perhaps not often trained to appreciate it; in England the chansons have been strangely little read. But the most singular thing is the cold reception, slightly if at all thawed recently, which they have met in France itself. It may give serious pause to the very high estimate generally entertained of French criticism by foreigners to consider this coldness, which once reached something like positive hostility in M. Ferdinand Brunetière, the chief French literary critic of our generation. I regret to see that M. Lanson, the latest historian of French literature, has not dared to separate himself from the academic grex. "On ne saurait nier," he says, "que quelques uns aient eu du talent;" but he evidently feels that this generous concession is in need of guards and caveats. There is no "beauté formelle" in them, he says—no formal beauty in those magnificently sweeping laisses, of which the ear that has once learnt their music can no more tire thereafter than of the sound of the sea itself. The style (and if it be objected that his previous words have been directly addressed to the later chansons and chanson writers, here he expressly says that this style "est le même style que dans le Roland," though "moins sobre, moins plein, moins sur") has "no beauty by itself," and finally he thinks that the best thing to do is "to let nine-tenths of the chansons follow nine-tenths of our tragedies." I have read many chansons and many tragedies; but I have never read a chanson that has not more poetry in it than ninety-nine French tragedies out of a hundred.

The fact is that it is precisely the beauté formelle, assisted as it is by the peculiar spirit of which so much has been said already, which constitutes the beauty of these poems: and that these characteristics are present, not of course in uniform measure, but certainly in the great majority of the chansons from Roland to the Bastard. Of course if a man sits down with a preconceived idea of an epic poem, it is more likely than not that his preconceived idea will be of something very different from a chanson de geste. And if, refusing to depart from his preconceived idea, and making that idea up of certain things taken from the Iliad, certain from the Æneid, certain from the Divina Commedia, certain from Paradise Lost,—if he runs over the list and says to the chanson, "Are you like Homer in this point? Can you match me Virgil in that?" the result will be that the chanson will fail to pass its examination.

But if, with some knowledge of literature in the wide sense, and some love for it, he sits down to take the chansons as they are, and judge them on their merits and by the law of their own poetical state, then I think he will come to a very different conclusion. He will say that their kind is a real kind, a thing by itself, something of which if it were not, nothing else in literature could precisely supply the want. And he will decide further that while the best of them are remarkably good of their kind, few of them can be called positively bad in it. And yet again, if he has been fortunately gifted by nature with that appreciation of form which saves the critic from mere prejudice and crotchet, from mere partiality, he will, I believe, go further still, and say that while owing something to spirit, they owe most to form itself, to the form of the single-assonanced or mono-rhymed tirade, assisted as it is by the singular beauty of Old French in sound, and more particularly by the sonorous recurring phrases of the chanson dialect. No doubt much instruction and some amusement can be got out of these poems as to matters of fact: no doubt some passages in Roland, in Aliscans, in the Couronnement Loys, have a stern beauty of thought and sentiment which deserves every recognition. But these things are not all-pervading, and they can be found elsewhere: the clash and clang of the tirade are everywhere here, and can be found nowhere else.

CHAPTER III.

To English readers, and perhaps not to English readers only, the middle division of the three great romance-subjects[43] ought to be of far higher interest than the others; and that not merely, even in the English case, for reasons of local patriotism. The mediæval versions of classical story, though attractive to the highest degree as evidence of the extraordinary plastic power of the period, which could transform all art to its own image and guise, and though not destitute of individual charm here and there, must always be mainly curiosities. The cycle of Charlemagne, a genuine growth and not merely an incrustation or transformation, illustrated, moreover, by particular examples of the highest merit, is exposed on the one hand to the charge of a certain monotony, and on the other to the objection that, beautiful as it is, it is dead. For centuries, except in a few deliberate literary exercises, the king à la barbe florie has inspired no modern singer—his geste is extinct. But the Legend of Arthur, the latest to take definite form of the three, has shown by far the greatest vitality. From generation to generation it has taken new forms, inspired new poetries. The very latest of the centuries has been the most prolific in contributions of any since the end of the Middle Ages; and there is no sufficient reason why the lineage should ever stop. For while the romance of antiquity is a mere "sport," an accident of time and circumstance, the chanson de geste, majestic and interesting as it is, representative as it is to a certain extent of a nation and a language, has the capital defect of not being adaptable. Having little or no allegorical capacity, little "soul," so to speak, it was left by the tide of time on the shores thereof without much hope of floating and living again. The Arthurian Legend, if not from the very first, yet from the first moment when it assumed vernacular forms, lent itself to that double meaning which, though it is open to abuse, and was terribly abused in these very ages, is after all the salvation of things literary, since every age adopting the first and outer meaning can suit the second and inner to its own taste and need.

That the vitality of the Legend is in part, if not wholly, due to the strange crossing and blending of its sources, I at least have no doubt. To discuss these sources at all, much more to express any definite opinion on the proportions and order of their blending, is a difficult matter for any literary student, and dangerous withal; but the adventure is of course not to be wholly shirked here. The matter has, both in England and abroad, been quite recently the subject of that rather acrimonious debating by which scholars in modern tongues seem to think it a point of honour to rival the scholars of a former day in the classics, though the vocabulary used is less picturesque. A great deal of this debate, too, turns on matters of sheer opinion, in regard to which language only appropriate to matters of sheer knowledge is too often used. The candid inquirer, informed that Mr, or M., or Herr So-and-so, has "proved" such and such a thing in such and such a book or dissertation, turns to the text, to find to his grievous disappointment that nothing is "proved"—but that more or less probable arguments are advanced with less or more temper against or in favour of this or that hypothesis. Even the dates of MSS., which in all such cases must be regarded as the primary data, are very rarely data at all, but only (to coin, or rather adapt, a much-needed term) speculata. And the matter is further complicated by the facts that extremely few scholars possess equal and adequate knowledge of Celtic, English, French, German, and Latin, and that the best palæographers are by no means always the best literary critics.

Where every one who has handled the subject has had to confess, or should have confessed, imperfect equipment in one or more respects, there is no shame in confessing one's own shortcomings. I cannot speak as a Celtic scholar; and I do not pretend to have examined MSS. But for a good many years I have been familiar with the printed texts and documents in Latin, English, French, and German, and I believe that I have not neglected any important modern discussions of the subject. To have no Celtic is the less disqualification in that all the most qualified Celtic scholars themselves admit, however highly they may rate the presence of the Celtic element in spirit, that no texts of the legend in its romantic form at present existing in the Celtic tongues are really ancient. And it is understood that there is now very little left unprinted that can throw much light on the general question. I shall therefore endeavour, without entering into discussions on minor points which would be unsuitable to the book, to give what seems to me the most probable view of the case, corrected by (though not by any means adjusted in a hopeless zigzag of deference to) the various authorities, from Ritson to Professor Rhys, from Paulin Paris to M. Loth, and from San Marte to Drs Förster and Zimmer.

The first and the most important thing—a thing which has been by no means always or often done—is to keep the question of Arthur apart from the question of the Arthurian Legend.

That there was no such a person as Arthur in reality was at one time a not very uncommon opinion among men who could call themselves scholars, though of late it has yielded to probable if not certain arguments. The two most damaging facts are the entire silence of Bede and that of Gildas in regard to him. The silence of Bede might be accidental, and he wrote ex hypothesi nearly two centuries after Arthur's day. Yet his collections were extremely careful, and the neighbourhood of his own Northumbria was certainly not that in which traditions of Arthur should have been least rife. That Gildas should say nothing is more surprising and more difficult of explanation. For putting aside altogether the positive testimony of the Vita Gildæ, to which we shall come presently, Gildas was, again ex hypothesi, a contemporary of Arthur's, and must have known all about him. If the compound of scolding and lamentation known as De Excidio Britanniæ is late and a forgery, we should expect it to contain some reference to the king; if it is early and genuine, it is difficult to see how such reference could possibly be omitted.

At the same time, mere silence can never establish anything but a presumption; and the presumption is in this case rebutted by far stronger probabilities on the other side. The evidence is here drawn from four main sources, which we may range in the order of their chronological bearing. First, there are the Arthurian place-names, and the traditions respecting them; secondly, the fragments of genuine early Welsh reference to Arthur; thirdly, the famous passage of Nennius, which introduces him for the first time to probably dated literature; fourthly, the curious references in the above-referred-to Vita Gildæ of, or attributed to, Caradoc of Lancarvan. After this last, or at a time contemporary with it, we come to the comparatively detailed account of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and the beginning of the Legend proper.

To summarise this evidence as carefully but as briefly as possible, we find, in almost all parts of Britain beyond the range of the first Saxon conquests, but especially in West Wales, Strathclyde, and Lothian, certain place-names connecting themselves either with Arthur himself or with the early catalogue of his battles.[44] We find allusions to him in Welsh poetry which may be as old as the sixth century—allusions, it is true, of the vaguest and most meagre kind, and touching no point of his received story except his mysterious death or no-death, but fairly corroborative of his actual existence. Nennius—the much-debated Nennius, whom general opinion attributes to the ninth century, but who may be as early as the eighth, and cannot well be later than the tenth—gives us the catalogue of the twelve battles, and the exploits of Arthur against the Saxons, in a single paragraph containing no reference to any but military matters, and speaking of Arthur not as king but as a dux bellorum commanding kings, many of whom were more noble than himself.

The first authority from whom we get any personal account of Arthur is Caradoc, if Caradoc it be. The biographer makes his hero St Gildas (I put minor and irrelevant discrepancies aside) contemporary with Arthur, whom he loved, and who was king of all Greater Britain. But his brother kings did not admit this sovereignty quietly, and often put him to flight. At last Arthur overthrew and slew Hoel, who was his major natu, and became unquestioned rex universalis Britanniæ, but incurred the censure of the Church for killing Hoel. From this sin Gildas himself at length absolved him. But King Melvas carried off King Arthur's queen, and it was only after a year that Arthur found her at Glastonbury and laid siege to that place. Gildas and the abbot, however, arranged matters, and the queen was given up. It is most proper to add in this place that probably at much the same time as the writings of Caradoc and of Geoffrey (v. infra), or at a time not very distant, William of Malmesbury and Giraldus Cambrensis give us Glastonbury traditions as to the tomb of Arthur, &c., which show that by the middle of the twelfth century such traditions were clustering thickly about the Isle of Avalon. All this time, however, it is very important to notice that there is hardly the germ, and, except in Caradoc, not even the germ, of what makes the Arthurian Legend interesting to us, even of what we call the Arthurian Legend. Although the fighting with the Saxons plays an important part in the Merlin branches of the story, it has extremely little to do with the local traditions, and was continually reduced in importance by the men of real genius, especially Mapes, Chrestien, and, long afterwards, Malory, who handled them. The escapade of Melvas communicates a touch rather nearer to the perfect form, but only a little nearer to it. In fact, there is hardly more in the story at this point than in hundreds of other references in early history or fiction to obscure kinglets who fought against invaders.

And it is again very important to observe that, though under the hands of Geoffrey of Monmouth the story at once acquires more romantic proportions, it is still not in the least, or only in the least, the story that we know. The advance is indeed great. The wonder-working of Merlin is brought in to help the patriotism of Arthur. The story of Uther's love for Igraine at once alters the mere chronicle into a romance. Arthur, the fruit of this passion, succeeds his father, carries on victorious war at home and abroad, is crowned with magnificence at Caerleon, is challenged by and defeats the Romans, is about to pass the Alps when he hears that his nephew Mordred, left in charge of the kingdom, has assumed the crown, and that Guinevere (Guanhumara, of whom we have only heard before as "of a noble Roman family, and surpassing in beauty all the women of the island") has wickedly married him. Arthur returns, defeats Mordred at Rutupiæ (after this battle Guinevere takes the veil), and, at Winchester, drives him to the extremity of Cornwall, and there overthrows and kills him. But the renowned King Arthur himself was mortally wounded, and "being carried thence to the Isle of Avallon to be cured of his wounds, he gave up the crown to his kinsman Constantine." And so Arthur passes out of Geoffrey's story, in obedience to one of the oldest, and certainly the most interesting, of what seem to be the genuine Welsh notices of the king—"Not wise is it to seek the grave of Arthur."

A few people, perhaps, who read this little book will need to be told that Geoffrey attributed the new and striking facts which he sprung upon his contemporaries to a British book which Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, had brought out of Armorica: and that not the slightest trace of this most interesting and important work has ever been found. It is a thousand pities that it has not survived, inasmuch as it was not only "a very ancient book in the British tongue," but contained "a continuous story in an elegant style." However, the inquiry whether Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, did or did not belong to the ancient British family of Harris may be left to historians proper. To the specially literary historian the chief point of interest is first to notice how little, if Geoffrey really did take his book from "British" sources, those sources apparently contained of the Arthurian Legend proper as we now know it. An extension of the fighting with Saxons at home, and the addition of that with Romans abroad, the Igraine episode, or rather overture, the doubtless valuable introduction of Merlin, the treason of Mordred and Guinevere, and the retirement to Avalon—that is practically all. No Round Table; no knights (though "Walgan, the king's nephew," is, of course, an early appearance of Gawain); none of the interesting difficulties about Arthur's succession: an entire absence of personal characteristics about Guinevere (even that peculiarity of hers which a French critic has politely described as her being "very subject to be carried off," and which already appears in Caradoc, being changed to a commonplace act of ambitious infidelity with Mordred): and, most remarkable of all, no Lancelot, and no Holy Grail.

Nevertheless Geoffrey had, as it has been the fashion to say of late years, "set the heather on fire," and perhaps in no literary instance on record did the blaze spread and heighten itself with such extraordinary speed and intensity. His book must have been written a little before the middle of the twelfth century: by the end thereof the legend was, except for the embellishments and amplifications which the Middle Age was always giving, complete.

In the account of its probable origins and growth which follows nothing can be further from the writer's wish than to emulate the confident dogmatism of those who claim to have proved or disproved this or that fact or hypothesis. In the nature of the case proof is impossible; we cannot go further than probability. It is unfortunate that some of the disputants on this, as on other kindred subjects, have not more frequently remembered the admirable words of the greatest modern practitioner and though he lacked some more recent information, the shrewdest modern critic of romance itself.[45] I need only say that though I have not in the least borrowed from either, and though I make neither responsible for my views, these latter, as they are about to be stated, will be found most to resemble those of Sir Frederic Madden in England and M. Paulin Paris in France—the two critics who, coming after the age of wild guesswork and imperfect reading, and before that of a scholarship which, sometimes at least, endeavours to vindicate itself by innovation for the sake of innovation, certainly equalled, and perhaps exceeded, any others in their familiarity with the actual texts. With that familiarity, so far as MSS. go, I repeat that I do not pretend to vie. But long and diligent reading of the printed material, assisted by such critical lights as critical practice in more literatures than one or two for many years may give, has led me to the belief that when they agreed they were pretty sure to be right, and that when they differed, the authority of either was at least equal, as authority, to anything subsequent.

The known or reasonably inferred historical procession of the Legend is as follows. Before the middle of the twelfth century we have nothing that can be called a story. At almost that exact point (the subject of the dedication of the Historia Britonum died in 1146) Geoffrey supplies the outlines of such a story. They were at once seized upon for filling in. Before many years two well-known writers had translated Geoffrey's Latin into French, another Geoffrey, Gaimar, and Wace of Jersey. Gaimar's Brut (a title which in a short time became generic) has not come down to us: Wace's (written in 1155) has, and though there is, as yet, no special attention bestowed upon Arthur, the Arthurian part of the story shares the process of dilatation and amplification usual in the Middle Ages. The most important of these additions is the appearance of the Round Table.

As Geoffrey fell into the hands of Wace, so did Wace fall into those of Layamon; but here the result is far more interesting, both for the history of the legend itself and for its connection with England. Not only did the priest of Ernley or Arley-on-Severn do the English tongue the inestimable service of introducing Arthur to it, not only did he write the most important book by far, both in size, in form, and in matter, that was written in English between the Conquest and the fourteenth century, but he added immensely to the actual legend. It is true that these additions still do not exactly give us the Arthur whom we know, for they still concern the wars with the Saxons and Romans chiefly. But if it were only that we find first[46] in Layamon the introduction of "elves" at Arthur's birth, and his conveyance by them at death in a magic boat to Queen "Argante" at Avalon, it would be almost enough. But there is much more. The Uther story is enlarged, and with it the appearances of Merlin; the foundation of the Round Table receives added attention; the voluntary yielding of Guinevere, here called Wenhaver, is insisted upon, and Gawain (Walwain) and Bedivere (Beduer) make their appearance. But there is still no Lancelot, and still no Grail.

These additions, which on the one side gave the greatest part of the secular interest, on the other almost the whole of the mystical attraction, to the complete story, had, however, it seems probable, been actually added before Layamon wrote. For the date of the earlier version of his Brut is put by the best authorities at not earlier than 1200, and it is also, according to such authorities, almost certain that the great French romances (which contain the whole legend with the exception of part of the Tristram story, and of hitherto untraced excursions like Malory's Beaumains) had been thrown into shape. But the origin, the authorship, and the order of Merlin in its various forms, of the Saint Graal and the Quest for it, of Lancelot and the Mort Artus,—these things are the centre of nearly all the disputes upon the subject.