No doubt the oldest existing, or at least the oldest yet discovered, MS. of _Aliscans_ is not the original, for it is rhymed, not a.s.sonanced, 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 Desrame, 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 _Siege 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 s.p.a.ce 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.
[Footnote 42: _Foulques de Candie_ (ed. Tarbe, Reims, 1860) is the only one of this batch which I possess, or have read _in extenso_.]
[Sidenote: _Some other_ chansons.]
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 Jerusalem_ 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. _Helias_ ties this historic matter on to legend proper by introducing the story of the Knight of the Swan; while _Les Chetifs_ (_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 Jof, 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 _trouvere_ among the poets of our day, the late Mr William Morris. Of yet others, the often-mentioned _Voyage a Constantin.o.ble_, 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 Pies_; _Acquin_, one of the rare _chansons_ dealing with Brittany (though Roland was historically count thereof); _Gerard 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.
[Sidenote: _Final remarks on them._]
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 mediaeval 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 Brunetiere, 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 "beaute 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 meme 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 _beaute formelle_, a.s.sisted as it is by the peculiar spirit of which so much has been said already, which const.i.tutes 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 _b.a.s.t.a.r.d_. 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 _aeneid_, 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 pa.s.s 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-a.s.sonanced or mono-rhymed _tirade_, a.s.sisted 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 amus.e.m.e.nt can be got out of these poems as to matters of fact: no doubt some pa.s.sages 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.
THE MATTER OF BRITAIN.
ATTRACTIONS OF THE ARTHURIAN LEGEND. DISCUSSIONS ON THEIR SOURCES. THE PERSONALITY OF ARTHUR. THE FOUR WITNESSES.
THEIR TESTIMONY. THE VERSION OF GEOFFREY. ITS LACUNae. 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 ARIMATHEA. MERLIN. LANCELOT.
THE LEGEND BECOMES DRAMATIC. STORIES OF GAWAIN AND OTHER KNIGHTS. SIR TRISTRAM. HIS STORY ALMOST CERTAINLY CELTIC.
SIR LANCELOT. THE MINOR KNIGHTS. ARTHUR. 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. CELTIC. FRENCH. ENGLISH.
LITERARY. THE CELTIC THEORY. THE FRENCH CLAIMS. THE THEORY OF GENERAL LITERARY GROWTH. THE ENGLISH OR ANGLO-NORMAN PRETENSIONS. ATTEMPTED HYPOTHESIS.
[Sidenote: _Attractions of the Arthurian Legend._]
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 mediaeval versions of cla.s.sical 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 dest.i.tute 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, ill.u.s.trated, 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 _a 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 circ.u.mstance, 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 sh.o.r.es 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 a.s.sumed 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.
[Footnote 43: 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 most useful recent things in English are Mr Nutt"s _Studies on the 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 Kolbing"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. Cledat on the subject in M. Pet.i.t de Julleville"s new _History_ (_v. supra_, p. 23, note) is unfortunately not by any means one of the best of these studies.]
[Sidenote: _Discussions on their sources._]
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 s.h.i.+rked 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 cla.s.sics, 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 palaeographers 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 doc.u.ments 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 Forster 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.
[Sidenote: _The personality of Arthur._]
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 Gildae_, 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 Britanniae_ 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.
[Sidenote: _The four witnesses._]
At the same time, mere silence can never establish anything but a presumption; and the presumption is in this case reb.u.t.ted 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 pa.s.sage of Nennius, which introduces him for the first time to probably dated literature; fourthly, the curious references in the above-referred-to _Vita Gildae_ 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.
[Sidenote: _Their testimony._]
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 n.o.ble than himself.
[Footnote 44: The late Mr Skene, with great learning and ingenuity, endeavoured in his _Four Ancient Books of Wales_ to claim all or almost all these place-names for Scotland in the wide sense. This can hardly be admitted: but impartial students of the historical references and the romances together will observe the constant introduction of northern localities in the latter, and the express testimony in the former to the effect that Arthur was general of _all_ the British forces. We need not rob Cornwall to pay Lothian. For the really old references in Welsh poetry see, besides Skene, Professor Rhys, _op. cit._ Gildas and Nennius (but not the _Vita Gildae_) will be found conveniently translated, with Geoffrey himself, in a volume of Bohn"s Historical Library, _Six Old English Chronicles_. The E.E.T.S.
edition of _Merlin_ contains a very long _excursus_ by Mr Stuart-Glennie on the place-name question.]
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 Britanniae_, 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 Glas...o...b..ry 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 Glas...o...b..ry traditions as to the tomb of Arthur, &c., which show that by the middle of the twelfth century such traditions were cl.u.s.tering 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.
[Sidenote: _The version of Geoffrey._]
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 pa.s.sion, 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 pa.s.s the Alps when he hears that his nephew Mordred, left in charge of the kingdom, has a.s.sumed the crown, and that Guinevere (Guanhumara, of whom we have only heard before as "of a n.o.ble Roman family, and surpa.s.sing in beauty all the women of the island") has wickedly married him. Arthur returns, defeats Mordred at Rutupiae (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 pa.s.ses 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."
[Sidenote: _Its_ lacunae.]
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 fas.h.i.+on 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.
[Sidenote: _How the Legend grew._]
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 pract.i.tioner 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 scholars.h.i.+p 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, a.s.sisted 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.
[Footnote 45: "Both these subjects of discussion [authors.h.i.+p and performance of Romances] have been the source of great controversy among antiquaries--a cla.s.s of men who, be it said with their forgiveness, are apt to be both positive and polemical upon the very points which are least susceptible of proof, and least valuable, if the truth could be ascertained."--Sir Walter Scott, "Essay on Romance," _Prose Works_, vi. 154.]
[Sidenote: _Wace._]
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 t.i.tle 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.
[Sidenote: _Layamon._]
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.
[Footnote 46: A caution may be necessary as to this word "first."
Nearly all the dates are extremely uncertain, and it is highly probable that intermediate texts of great importance are lost, or not yet found. But Layamon gives us Wace as an authority, and this is not in Wace. See Madden"s edition (London, 1847).]