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CHAPTER III.

THE MATTER OF BRITAIN.

THE ARTHURIAN LEGEND DISCUSSIONS ON THEIR ATTRACTIONS OF SOURCES THE PERSONALITY OF ARTHUR-THE FOUR WITNESSES— THEIR TESTIMONY — THE VERSION OF GEOFFREY ITS LACUNÆ— HOW THE LEGEND GREW-WACE-LAYAMON THE ROMANCES PROPER WALTER MAP ROBERT DE BORRON -CHRESTIEN DE TROYES

PROSE OR VERSE FIRST?—A LATIN GRAAL-BOOK-THE MABINOGION

THE LEGEND ITSELF THE STORY OF JOSEPH OF ARIMATHEAMERLIN LANCELOT THE LEGEND BECOMES DRAMATIC-STORIES OF GAWAIN AND OTHER KNIGHTS-SIR TRISTRAM-HIS STORY ALMOST CERTAINLY CELTIC-SIR LANCELOT THE MINOR KNIGHTS—ARTHUR

-CELTIC

-GUINEVERE—THE GRAAL-HOW IT PERFECTS THE STORY-NATURE
OF THIS PERFECTION-NO SEQUEL POSSIBLE-LATIN EPISODES—THE
LEGEND AS A WHOLE-THE THEORIES OF ITS ORIGIN-
FRENCH-ENGLISH-LITERARY—THE CELTIC THEORY—THE FRENCH
CLAIMS—THE THEORY OF GENERAL LITERARY GROWTH—THE ENG-
LISH OR ANGLO-NORMAN PRETENSIONS—ATTEMPTED HYPOTHESIS.

To English readers, and perhaps not to English readers only, the middle division of the three great romancesubjects1 ought to be of far higher interest than the

1 See the quotation from Jean Bodel, p. 26, note. The literature of the Arthurian question is very large; and besides the drawbacks referred to in the text, much of it is scattered in periodicals. The things in English are Mr Nutt's Studies on the

most useful recent

Attractions of

others; and that not merely, even in the English case, for reasons of local patriotism. The medithe Arthurian æval versions of classical story, though atLegend, tractive 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

Legend of the Holy Grail (London, 1888); Professor Rhys's Arthurian Legend (Oxford, 1891); and the extensive introduction to Dr Sommer's Malory (London, 1890). In French the elaborate papers on different parts which M. Gaston Paris brings out at intervals in Romania cannot be neglected; and M. Loth's surveys of the subject there and in the Revue Celtique (October 1892) are valuable. Naturally, there has been a great deal in German, the best being, perhaps, Dr Kölbing's long introduction to his reprint of Arthour and Merlin (Leipzig, 1890). Other books will be mentioned in subsequent notes; but a complete and impartial history of the whole subject, giving the contents, with strictly literary criticism only, of all the texts, and merely summarising theories as to origin, &c., is still wanting, and sorely wanted. Probably there is still no better, as there is certainly no more delightful, book on the matter than M. Paulin Paris's Romans de la Table Ronde (5 vols., Paris, 1868-77). The monograph by M. Clédat on the subject in M. Petit de Julleville's new History (v. supra, p. 23, note) is unfortunately not by any means one of the best of these studies.

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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.

Discussions on
their sources.

Το

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. 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 de

bating 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

The personality

of Arthur.

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

Arthur's day.

hypothesi nearly two centuries after Yet his collections were extremely

careful, and the neighbourhood of his own Northumbria was certainly not that in which traditions

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