the three Welsh-French or French-Welsh romances of Yvain-Owain, Erec-Geraint, and Percivale-Peredur, and then turn to those that are certainly and purely Celtic, Kilhwch and Olwen, the Dream of Rhiabwy (both of these Arthurian after a fashion, though quite apart from our Arthurian Legend), and the fourfold Mabinogi, which tells the adventures of Rhiannon and those of Math ap Matholwy. I cannot conceive this being done by any one without his feeling that he has passed from one world into another entirely different, -that the two classes of story simply cannot by any possibility be, in any more than the remotest suggestion, the work of the same people, or have been produced under the same literary covenant. For Let us now turn to the Legend itself. The story which ends in Avalon begins in Jerusalem. The Legend though the Graal-legends are undoubtedly itself. later additions to whatever may have been the original Arthurian saga-seeing that we find nothing of them in the early Welsh traditions, nothing in Nennius, nothing in Geoffrey, nothing even in Wace or Layamon-yet such is the skill with which the unknown or uncertain authors have worked them into the legend that the whole makes one indivisible romance. Yet (as the untaught genius of Malory instinctively perceived) when the Graal-story on the one hand, and the loves of Lancelot and Guinevere with which it is connected on the other, came in, they made comparatively otiose and uninteresting the wars with Saxons and Romans, which in the earlier Legend had occupied almost the whole room. And accordingly these wars, which still hold a very large part of the field in the Merlin, drop out to some extent later. The whole cycle consists practically of five parts, each of which in almost all cases exists in divers forms, and more than one of which overlaps and is overlapped by one or more of the others. These five are Merlin, the Saint-Graal, Lancelot, the Quest of the Saint-Graal, and the Death of Arthur. Each of the first two pairs intertwines with the other: the last, Mort Artus, completes them all, and thus its title was not improperly used in later times to designate the whole Legend. The starting-point of the whole, in time and incident, is the supposed revenge of the Jews on Joseph of Arimathea for the part he has taken in the burial of our Lord. He is thrown into The story of Arimathea. prison and remains there (miraculously comforted, so that the time seems to him but as a day or two) till delivered by Titus. Then he and certain more or less faithful Christians set out in charge of the Holy Graal, which has served for the Last Supper, which holds Christ's blood, and which is specially under the guardianship of Joseph's son, the Bishop "Josephes," to seek foreign lands, and a home for the Holy Vessel. After a long series of the wildest adventures, in which the personages, whose names are known rather mistily to readers of Malory only King Evelake, Naciens, and others- appear fully, and in which many marvels take place, the company, or the holier survivors of them, are finally settled in Britain. Here the imprudence of Evelake (or Mor - drains) causes him to receive the "dolorous stroke," from which none but his last descendant, Galahad, is to recover him fully. The most striking of all these adventures, related in various forms in other parts of the Legend, is the sojourn of Naciens on a desert island, where he is tempted of the devil; while a very great part is played throughout by the Legend of the Three Trees, which in successive ages play their part in the Fall, in the first origin of mankind according to natural birth, not creation, in the building of the Temple, and in the Passion. This later legend, a wild but very beautiful one, dominated the imagination of English medieval writers very particularly, and is fully developed, apart from its Arthurian use, in the vast and interesting miscellany of the Cursor Mundi. Merlin. But when the Graal and its guardians have been safely established upon English soil, the connection of the legend with the older and, so to speak, historical Arthurian traditions, is effected by means of Merlin, in a manner at least ingenious if not very direct. The results of the Passion, and especially the establishment on earth of a Christian monarchy with a sort of palladium in the Saint-Graal, greatly disturb the equanimity of the infernal regions; and a council is held to devise counter-policy. It occurs apparently that as this discomfiture has come. by means of the union of divine and human natures, it can be best opposed by a union of human and diabolic: and after some minor proceedings a seductive devil is despatched to play incubus to the last and chastest daughter of a prud'homme, who has been driven to despair and death by previous satanic attacks. The attempt is successful in a way; but as the victim keeps her chastity of intention and mind, not only is she herself saved from the legal consequences of the matter, but her child when born is the celebrated Merlin, a being endowed with supernatural power and knowledge, and not always scrupulous in the use of them, but always on the side of the angels rather than of his paternal kinsfolk. A further and more strictly literary connection is effected by attributing the knowledge of the Graal history to his information, conveyed to his master and pupil Blaise, who writes it (as well as the earlier adventures at least of the Arthurian era proper) from Merlin's dictation or report. For some time the various Merlin stories follow Geoffrey in recounting the adventures of the prophetic child in his youth, with King Vortigern and others. But he is soon brought (again in accordance with Geoffrey) into direct responsibility for Arthur, by his share in the wooing of Igraine. For it is to be observed that—and not in this instance only-though there is usually some excuse for him, Merlin is in these affairs more commonly occupied in making two lovers happy than in attending to the strict dictates of morality. And thenceforward till his inclusion in his enchanted prison (an affair in which it is proper to say that the earliest versions give a much more favourable account of the conduct and motives of the heroine than that which Malory adopted, and which Tennyson for purposes of poetic contrast blackened yet further) he plays the part of adviser, assistant, and good enchanter generally to Arthur and Arthur's knights. He in some stories directly procures, and in all confirms, the seating of Arthur on his father's throne; he brings the king's nephews, Gawain and the rest, to assist their uncle, in some cases against their own fathers; he presides over the foundation of the Round Table, and brings about the marriage of Guinevere and Arthur; he assists, sometimes by actual force of arms, sometimes as head of the intelligence department, sometimes by simple gramarye, in the discomfiture not merely of the rival and rebel kinglets, but of the Saxons and Romans. As has been said, Malory later thought proper to drop the greater part of this latter business (including the interminable fights round the Roche aux Saisnes or Saxon rock). And he also discarded a curious episode which makes a great figure in the original Merlin, the tale of the "false Guinevere,” a foster-sister, namesake, and counterpart of the true princess, who is nearly substituted for Guinevere herself on her bridal night, and who later usurps for a considerable time the place and rights of the queen. For it cannot be too often repeated that Arthur, not even in Malory a "blameless king" by any means, is in the earlier and original versions still less blameless, especially in the article of faithfulness to his wife. We do not, however, in the Merlin group proper get any tidings of Lancelot, though Lucan, Kay, Bedivere, and others, as well as Gawain and the other sons of Lot, make their appearance, and the Arthurian court and régime, as we imagine it with the Round Table, is |