more cautious, but perhaps at least equally firm, support by Professor Rhys. As has been said, these Neo-Celticists do not, when they are wise, attempt to revive the older form of the claims. They rest theirs on the scattered references in undoubtedly old Welsh literature above referred to, on the place-names which play such an undoubtedly remarkable part in the local nomenclature of the West-Welsh border in the south-west of England and in Cornwall, of Wales less frequently, of Strathclyde and Lothian eminently, and not at all, or hardly at all, of that portion of England which was early and thoroughly subjected to Saxon and Angle sway. And the bolder of them, taking advantage of the admitted superiority in age of Irish Welsh literature as far as texts go, have had recourse to this, not for direct originals (it is admitted that there are none, even of parts of the Legend such as those relating to Tristram and Iseult, which are not only avowedly Irish in place but Irish in tone), but for evidences of differential origin in comparison with classical and Teutonic literature. Unfortunately this last point is one not of technical "scholarship," but of general literary criticism, and it is certain that the Celticists have not converted all or most students in that subject to their view. I should myself give my

to

opinion,

ally the

for whatever it may be worth, to the effect

that the tone and tendency of the Celtic, and especiIrish, literature of very early days, as declared by its own modern champions, are quite different from of the romances in general and the Arthurian in particular. Again, though the other two

those

Legend

classes of evidence cannot be so ruled out of court as a whole, it must be evident that they go but a very little way, and are asked to go much further. If any one will consult Professor Rhys's careful though most friendly abstract of the testimony of early Welsh literature, he will see how very great the interval is. When we are asked to accept a magic caldron which fed people at discretion as the special original of the Holy Grail, the experienced critic knows the state of the case pretty well.1 While as to the place-names, though they give undoubted and valuable support of a kind to the historical existence of Arthur, and support still more valuable to the theory of the early and wide distribution of legends respecting him, it is noticeable that they have hardly anything to do with our Arthurian Legend at all. They concern-as indeed we should expect the fights with the Saxons, and some of them reflect (very vaguely and thinly) a tradition of conjugal difficulties between Arthur and his queen. But unfortunately these last are not confined to Arthurian experience; and, as we have seen, Arthur's fights with the Saxons, except the last when they joined Mordred, are of ever-dwindling importance for the Romance.

Like the Celtic theory, the French has an engaging The French appearance of justice and probability, and it has over the Celtic the overwhelming advantage as regards texts. That all, without exception,

claims.

1 For these magical provisions of food are commonplaces of general popular belief, and, as readers of Major Wingate's book on the Soudan will remember, it was within the last few years an article of faith there that one of the original Mahdi's rivals had a magic tent which would supply rations for an army.

of the oldest texts in which the complete romantic story of Arthur appears are in the French language is a fact entirely indisputable, and at first blench conclusive. We may even put it more strongly still and say that, taking positive evidence as apart from mere assertion (as in the case of the Latin Graal-book), there is nothing to show that any part of the full romantic story of Arthur, as distinguished from the meagre quasi-historical outline of Geoffrey, ever appeared in any language before it appeared in French. The most certain of the three personal claimants for the origination of these early texts, Chrestien de Troyes, was undoubtedly a Frenchman in the wide sense; so (if he existed) was Robert de Borron, another of them. The very phrase so familiar to readers of Malory, “the French book," comes to the assistance of the claim.

And yet, as is the case with some other claims which look irresistible at first sight, the strength of this shrinks and dwindles remarkably when it comes to be examined. One consideration is by itself sufficient, not indeed totally to destroy it, but to make a terrible abatement in its cogency; and this is, that if the great Arthurian romances, written between the middle and end of the twelfth century, were written in French, it was chiefly because they could not have been written in any other tongue. Not only was no other language generally intelligible to that public of knights and ladies to which they were addressed; not only was no other vernacular language generally known to European

to European men of letters, but no such ver

nacular, except Provençal, had attained to anything

like the perfection necessary to make it a convenient vehicle. Whatever the nationality of the writer or writers, it was more likely that he or they would write in French than in any other language. And as a matter of fact we see that the third of the great national claimants was an Englishman, while it is not certain that Robert de Borron was not an English subject. Nor is it yet formally determined whether Chrestien himself, in those parts of his work which are specially Arthurian, had not Map or some one else before him as an authority.

The theory of

ary growth.

The last theory, that the Legend may be almost if not quite sufficiently accounted for as a legitimate descendant of previous literature, classical general liter- and other (including Oriental sources), has been the least general favourite. As originally started, or at least introduced into English literary history, by Warton, it suffered rather unfairly from some defects of its author. Warton's History of English Poetry marks, and to some extent helped to produce, an immense change for the better in the study of English literature: and he deserved the contemptuous remarks of some later critics as little as he did the savage attacks of the half-lunatic Ritson. But he was rather indolent; his knowledge, though wide, was very desultory and full of scraps and gaps; and, like others in his century, he was much too fond of hypothesis without hypostasis, of supposition without substance. He was very excusably but very unluckily ignorant of what may be called the comparative panorama of English and European literature during the Middle Ages,

and was apt to assign to direct borrowing or imitation those fresh workings up of the eternal données of all literary art which presented themselves. As the theory has been more recently presented with far exacter learning and greater judgment by his successor, Mr Courthope,1 it is much relieved from most of its disabilities. I have myself no doubt that the Greek romances (see chap. ix.) do represent at the least a stage directly connecting classical with romantic literature; and that the later of them (which, it must be remembered, were composed in this very twelfth century, and must have come under the notice of the crusaders), may have exercised a direct effect upon mediæval Romance proper. I formed this opinion more than twenty years ago, when I first read Hysminias and Hysmine; and I have never seen reason to change it since. But these influences, though not to be left out of the question, are perhaps in one respect too general, and in another too partial, to explain the precise matter. That the Arthurian Romances, in common with all the romances, and with mediæval literature generally, were much more influenced by the traditional classical culture than used at one time to be thought, I have believed ever since I began to study the subject, and am more and more convinced of it. The classics both of Europe and the East played a part, and no small part, in bringing about the new literature; but it was only a part.

1 In his History of English Poetry, vol. i., London, 1895, and in a subsequent controversy with Mr Nutt, which was carried on in the Athenæum.