It is, however, quite easy to understand how, this Tristram legend existing by hypothesis already or being created at the same time, the curious centripetal and agglutinative tendency of mediaeval romance should have brought it into connection with that of Arthur. The mere fact of Mark"s being a va.s.sal-king of Greater Britain would have been reason enough; but the parallel between the prowess of Lancelot and Tristram, and between their loves for the two queens, was altogether too tempting to be resisted. So Tristram makes his appearance in Arthur"s court, and as a knight of the Round Table, but as not exactly at home there,--as a visitor, an "honorary member" rather than otherwise, and only an occasional partaker of the home tournaments and the adventures abroad which occupy Arthur"s knights proper.
[Sidenote: _Sir Lancelot._]
The origin of the greatest of these, of Lancelot himself, is less distinct. Since the audacious imaginativeness of the late M. de la Villemarque, which once, I am told, brought upon him the epithet "_Faussaire!_" uttered in full conclave of Breton antiquaries, has ceased to be taken seriously by Arthurian students, the old fancies about some Breton "Ancel" or "Ancelot" have been quietly dropped. But the Celticisers still cling fondly to the supposed possibility of derivation from King Melvas, or King Maelgon, one or other of whom does seem to have been connected, as above mentioned, by early Welsh tradition with the abduction of the queen. It is, however, evident to any reader of the _Charette_ episode, whether in the original French prose and verse or in Malory, that Meleagraunce the ravisher and Lancelot the avenger cannot have the same original. I should myself suppose Lancelot to have been a directly and naturally spontaneous literary growth. The necessity of a love-interest for the Arthurian story being felt, and, according to the manner of the time, it being felt with equal strength that the lover must not be the husband, it was needful to look about for some one else. The merely business-like self-surrender to Mordred as the king _de facto_, to the "lips that were near," of Geoffrey"s Guanhumara and Layamon"s Wenhaver, was out of the question; and the part of Gawain as a faithful nephew was too well settled already by tradition for it to be possible to make him the lover. Perhaps the great artistic stroke in the whole Legend, and one of the greatest in all literature, is the concoction of a hero who should be not only
"Like Paris handsome, and like Hector brave,"
but more heroic than Paris and more interesting than Hector,--not only a "greatest knight," but at once the sinful lover of his queen and the champion who should himself all but achieve, and in the person of his son actually achieve, the sacred adventure of the Holy Graal. If, as there seems no valid reason to disbelieve, the hitting upon this idea, and the invention or adoption of Lancelot to carry it out, be the work of Walter Mapes, then Walter Mapes is one of the great novelists of the word, and one of the greatest of them. If it was some unknown person (it could hardly be Chrestien, for in Chrestien"s form the Graal interest belongs to Percevale, not to Lancelot or Galahad), then the same compliment must be paid to that person unknown. Meanwhile the conception and execution of Lancelot, to whomsoever they may be due, are things most happy. Entirely free from the faultlessness which is the curse of the cla.s.sical hero; his unequalled valour not seldom rewarded only by reverses; his merits redeemed from mawkishness by his one great fault, yet including all virtues that are themselves most amiable, and deformed by no vice that is actually loathsome; the soul of goodness in him always warring with his human frailty;--Sir Lancelot fully deserves the n.o.ble funeral eulogy p.r.o.nounced over his grave, and felt by all the elect to be, in both senses, one of the first of all extant pieces of perfect English prose.
[Sidenote: _The minor knights._]
But the virtues which are found in Lancelot eminently are found in all but the "felon" knights, differing only in degree. It is true that the later romances and compilations, feeling perhaps the necessity of shade, extend to all the sons of Lot and Margause, except Gareth, and to some extent Gawain, the unamiable character which Mordred enjoys throughout, and which even in the _Merlin_ is found showing itself in Agravaine. But Sir Lamoracke, their victim, is almost Lancelot"s equal: and the best of Lancelot"s kin, especially Sir Bors, come not far behind. It is entirely untrue that, as the easy epigram has it, they all "hate their neighbour and love their neighbour"s wife." On the contrary, except in the bad subjects--ranging from the mere ruffianism of Breuse-sans-Pitie to the misconduct of Meleagraunce--there is no hatred of your neighbour anywhere. It is not hatred of your neighbour to be prepared to take and give hard blows from and to him, and to forgather in faith and friends.h.i.+p before and after. And as to the other and more delicate point, a large majority of the knights can at worst claim the benefit of the law laid down by a very pious but indulgent mediaeval writer,[56] who says that if men will only not meddle with "spouse or sib" (married women or connections within the prohibited degrees), it need be no such deadly matter.
[Footnote 56: _Cursor Mundi_, l. 2898.]
[Sidenote: _Arthur._]
It may be desirable, as it was in reference to Charlemagne, to say a few words as to Arthur himself. In both cases there is noticeable (though less in the case of Arthur than in that of Charlemagne) the tendency _not_ to make the king blameless, or a paragon of prowess: and in both cases, as we should expect, this tendency is even more noticeable in the later versions than in the earlier. This may have been partly due to the aristocratic spirit of at least idealised feudalism, which gave the king no semi-divine character, but merely a human primacy _inter pares_; partly also to the literary instinct of the Middle Ages, which had discovered that the "biggest" personage of a story is by no means that one who is most interesting. In Arthur"s very first literary appearance, the Nennius pa.s.sage, his personal prowess is specially dwelt upon: and in those parts of the _Merlin_ group which probably represent the first step from Geoffrey to the complete legend, he slays Saxons and Romans, wrests the sword single-handed from King Ryaunce, and so forth, as valiantly as Gawain himself. It is, however, curious that at this time the writers are much less careful than at a later to represent him as faithful to Guinevere, and blameless before marriage, with the exception of the early affair with Margause. He accepts the false Guinevere and the Saxon enchantress very readily; and there is other scandal in which the complaisant Merlin as usual figures. But in the accepted Arthuriad (I do not of course speak of modern writers) this is rather kept in the background, while his prowess is also less prominent, except in a few cases, such as his great fight with his sister"s lover, Sir Accolon. Even here he never becomes the complaisant wittol, which late and rather ign.o.ble works like the _c.o.kwold"s Daunce_[57] represent him as being: and he never exhibits the slightest approach to the outbursts of almost imbecile wrath which characterise Charlemagne.
[Footnote 57: Printed by Hartshorne, _Ancient Metrical Tales_ (London, 1829), p. 209; and Hazlitt, _Early Popular Poetry_ (London, 1864), i.
38.]
[Sidenote: _Guinevere._]
Something has been said of Guinevere already. It is perhaps hard to look, as any English reader of our time must, backward through the coloured window of the greatest of the _Idylls of the King_ without our thoughts of the queen being somewhat affected by it. But those who knew their Malory before the _Idylls_ appeared escape that danger. Mr Morris"s Guinevere in her _Defence_ is perhaps a little truer than Lord Tennyson"s to the original conception--indeed, much of the delightful volume in which she first appeared is pure _Extrait Arthurien_. But the Tennysonian glosses on Guinevere"s character are not ill justified: though perhaps, if less magnificent, it would have been truer, both to the story and to human nature, to attribute her fall rather to the knowledge that Arthur himself was by no means immaculate than to a despairing sense of his immaculateness. The Guinevere of the original romances is the first perfectly human woman in English literature. They have enn.o.bled her unfaithfulness to Arthur by her constancy to Lancelot, they have saved her constancy to Lancelot from being insipid by interspersing the gusts of jealousy in the matter of the two Elaines which play so great a part in the story.
And it is curious that, coa.r.s.e as both the manners and the speech of the Middle Ages are supposed to have been, the majority of these romances are curiously free from coa.r.s.eness. The ideas might shock Ascham"s prudery, but the expression is, with the rarest exceptions, scrupulously adapted to polite society. There are one or two coa.r.s.e pa.s.sages in the _Merlin_ and the older _Saint Graal_, and I remember others in outside branches like the _Chevalier as Deux Espees_. But though a French critic has detected something shocking in _Le Chevalier a la Charette_, it requires curious consideration to follow him.
[Sidenote: _The Graal._]
The part which the Holy Graal plays in the legend generally is not the least curious or interesting feature of the whole. As has been already said more than once, it makes no figure at all in the earliest versions: and it is consistent with this, as well as with the general theory and procedure of romance, that when it does appear the development of the part played by it is conducted on two more or less independent lines, which, however, the later compilers at least do not seem to think mutually exclusive. With the usual reserves as to the impossibility of p.r.o.nouncing with certainty on the exact order of the additions to this wonderful structure of legend, it may be said to be probable, on all available considerations of literary probability, that of the two versions of the Graal story--that in which Percival is the hero of the Quest, and that in which Galahad occupies that place--the former is the earlier. According to this, which commended itself especially to the French and German handlers of the story,[58]
the Graal Quest lies very much outside the more intimate concerns of the Arthurian court and the realm of Britain. Indeed, in the latest and perhaps greatest of this school, Wolfram von Eschenbach (_v._ chap. vi.), the story wanders off into uttermost isles of fancy, quite remote from the proper Arthurian centres. It may perhaps be conceded that this development is in more strict accordance with what we may suppose and can partly perceive to have been the original and almost purely mystical conception of the Graal as entertained by Robert de Borron, or another--the conception in which all earthly, even wedded, love is of the nature of sin, and according to which the perfect knight is only an armed monk, converting the heathen and resisting the temptations of the devil, the world, and more particularly the flesh; diversifying his wars and preachings only or mainly by long mystical visions of sacred history as it presented itself to mediaeval imagination. It is true that the genius of Wolfram has not a little coloured and warmed this chilly ideal: but the story is still conducted rather afar from general human interest, and very far off indeed from the special interests of Arthur.
[Footnote 58: And contrariwise the Welsh _Peredur_ (_Mabinogion_, _ed.
cit._, 81) has only a possible allusion to the Graal story, while the English _Sir Percivale_ (_Thornton Romances_, ed. Halliwell, Camden Society, 1844) omits even this.]
[Sidenote: _How it perfects the story._]
Another genius, that of Walter Map (by hypothesis, as before), described and worked out different capabilities in the story. By the idea, simple, like most ideas of genius, of making Lancelot, the father, at once the greatest knight of the Arimathean lineage, and unable perfectly to achieve the Quest by reason of his sin, and Galahad the son, inheritor of his prowess but not of his weakness, he has at once secured the success of the Quest in sufficient accordance with the original idea and the presence of abundant purely romantic interest as well. And at the same time by connecting the sin which disqualifies Lancelot with the catastrophe of Arthur, and the achieving of the Quest itself with the weakening and breaking up of the Round Table (an idea insisted upon no doubt, by Tennyson, but existent in the originals), a dramatic and romantic completeness has been given to the whole cycle which no other collection of mediaeval romances possesses, and which equals, if it does not exceed, that of any of the far more apparently regular epics of literary history. It appears, indeed, to have been left for Malory to adjust and bring out the full epic completeness of the legend: but the materials, as it was almost superfluous for Dr Sommer to show by chapter and verse, were all ready to his hand. And if (as that learned if not invariably judicious scholar thinks) there is or once was somewhere a _Suite_ of Lancelot corresponding to the _Suite de Merlin_ of which Sir Thomas made such good use, it is not improbable that we should find the adjustment, though not the expression, to some extent antic.i.p.ated.
[Sidenote: _Nature of this perfection._]
At any rate, the idea is already to hand in the original romances of our present period; and a wonderfully great and perfect idea it is.
Not the much and justly praised arrangement and poetical justice of the Oresteia or of the story of Oedipus excel the Arthuriad in what used to be called "propriety" (which has nothing to do with prudishness), while both are, as at least it seems to me, far inferior in varied and poignant interest. That the attainment of the Graal, the healing of the maimed king, and the fulfilling of the other "weirds" which have lain upon the race of Joseph, should practically coincide with the termination of that glorious reign, with which fate and metaphysical aid had connected them, is one felicity. The "dolorous death and departing out of this world" in Lyonnesse and elsewhere corresponds to and completes the triumph of Sarras. From yet another point of view, the bringing into judgment of all the characters and their deeds is equally complete, equally natural and unforced. It is astonis.h.i.+ng that men like Ascham,[59] unless blinded by a survival of mediaeval or a foreshadowing of Puritan prudery, should have failed to see that the morality of the _Morte d"Arthur_ is as rigorous as it is unsqueamish. Guinevere in her cloister and Lancelot in his hermitage, Arthur falling by (or at any rate in battle against) the fruit of his incestuous intercourse--these are not exactly encouragements to vice: while at the same time the earlier history may be admitted to have nothing of a crabbed and jejune virtue.
[Footnote 59: This curious outburst, referred to before, may be found in the _Schoolmaster_, ed. Arber, p. 80, or ed. Giles, _Works of Ascham_, iii. 159.]
But this conclusion, with the minor events which lead up to it, is scarcely less remarkable as exhibiting in the original author, whoever he was, a sense of art, a sense of finality, the absence of which is the great blot on Romance at large, owing to the natural, the human, but the very inartistic, craving for sequels. As is well known, it was the most difficult thing in the world for a mediaeval romancer to let his subject go. He must needs take it up from generation to generation; and the interminable series of Amadis and Esplandian stories, which, as the last example, looks almost like a designed caricature, is only an exaggeration of the habit which we can trace back through _Huon of Bordeaux_ and _Guy of Warwick_ almost to the earliest _chansons de geste_.
[Sidenote: _No sequel possible._]
But the intelligent genius who shaped the Arthuriad has escaped this danger, and that not merely by the simple process which Dryden, with his placid irony, somewhere describes as "leaving scarce three of the characters alive." We have reached, and feel that we have reached, the conclusion of the whole matter when the Graal has been taken to Heaven, and Arthur has gone to Avalon. n.o.body wants to hear anything of the doubtless excellent Duke and King Constantine. Sir Ector himself could not leave the stage with more grace than with his great discourse on his dead comrade and kinsman. Lancelot"s only son has gone with the Graal. The end is not violent or fact.i.tious, it is necessary and inevitable. It were even less unwise to seek the grave of Arthur than to attempt to take up the story of the Arthurians after king and queen and Lancelot are gone each to his and her own place, after the Graal is attained, after the Round Table is dissolved.
It is creditable to the intelligence and taste of the average mediaeval romance-writer that even he did not yield to his besetting sin in this particular instance. With the exception of _Ysaie le Triste_, which deals with the fortunes of a supposed son of Tristan and Yseult, and thus connects itself with the most outlying part of the legend--a part which, as has been shown, is only hinged on to it--I cannot remember a single romance which purports to deal with affairs subsequent to the battle in Lyonesse. The two latest that can be in any way regarded as Arthurian, _Arthur of Little Britain_ and _Cleriodus_, avowedly take up the story long subsequently, and only claim for their heroes the glory of distant descent from Arthur and his heroes. _Meliadus de Lyonnois_ ascends from Tristram, and endeavours to connect the matter of Britain with that of France. _Giron le Courtois_ deals with Palamedes and the earlier Arthurian story; while _Perceforest_, though based on the _Brut_, selects periods anterior to Arthur.[60]
[Footnote 60: I have a much less direct acquaintance with the romances mentioned in this paragraph than with most of the works referred to in this book. I am obliged to speak of them at second-hand (chiefly from Dunlop and Mr Ward"s invaluable _Catalogue of Romances_, vol. i. 1883; vol. ii. 1893). It is one of the results of the unlucky fancy of scholars for re-editing already accessible texts instead of devoting themselves to _anecdota_, that work of the first interest, like _Perceforest_, for instance, is left to black-letter, which, not to mention its costliness, is impossible to weak eyes; even where it is not left to ma.n.u.script, which is more impossible still.]
[Sidenote: _Latin episodes._]
There was, however, no such artistic constraint as regards episodes of the main story, or _romans d"aventures_ celebrating the exploits of single knights, and connected with that story by a sort of stock overture and _denoument_, in the first of which an adventure is usually started at Arthur"s court, while the successful knight is also accustomed to send his captives to give testimony to his prowess in the same place. As has been said above,[61] there is a whole cl.u.s.ter of such episodes--most, it would seem, owing their origin to England or Scotland--which have Sir Gawain for their chief hero, and which, at least in such forms as survive, would appear to be later than the great central romances which have been just noticed. Some of these are of much local interest--there being a Scottish group, a group which seems to centre about c.u.mbria, and so forth--but they fall rather to the portion of my successor in this series, who will take as his province _Gawaine and the Green Knight_, _Lancelot of the Laik_, the quaint alliterative Thornton _Morte Arthur_, and not a few others. The most interesting of all is that hitherto untraced romance of Beaumains or Gareth (he, as Gawain"s brother, brings the thing into the cla.s.s referred to), of which Malory has made an entire book, and which is one of the most completely and perfectly turned-out episodes existing.
It has points in common with _Yvain_,[62] and others in common with _Ipomydon_,[63] but at the same time quite enough of its own. But we have no French text for it. On the other hand, we have long verse romances like _Durmart le Gallois_[64] (which both from the t.i.tle and from certain mystical Graal pa.s.sages rather connects itself with the Percevale sub-section); and the _Chevalier as Deux Espees_,[65] which belongs to the Gawain cla.s.s. But all these, as well as the German romances to be noticed in chap. vi., distinguish themselves from the main stories a.n.a.lysed above not merely by their obvious and almost avowed dependence, but by a family likeness in incident, turn, and phrase from which those main stories are free. In fact the general fault of the _Romans d"Aventures_ is that neither the unsophisticated freshness of the _chanson de geste_, nor the variety and commanding breadth of the Arthurian legend, appears in them to the full. The kind of "balaam," the stock repet.i.tions and expletives at which Chaucer laughs in "Sir Thopas"--a laugh which has been rather unjustly received as condemning the whole cla.s.s of English romances--is very evident even in the French texts. We have left the great and gracious ways, the inspiring central ideas, of the larger romance.
[Footnote 61: See pp. 114, 115 note.]
[Footnote 62: See above, p. 102.]
[Footnote 63: Ed. Weber, _Metrical Romances_, Edinburgh, 1810, ii.
279.]
[Footnote 64: Ed. Stengel. Tubingen, 1873.]
[Footnote 65: Ed. Forster. Halle, 1877.]
[Sidenote: _The legend as a whole._]
It may perhaps seem to some readers that too much praise has been given to that romance itself. Far as we are, not merely from Ascham"s days, but from those in which the excellent Dunlop was bound to confess that "they [the romances of the Round Table] will be found extremely defective in those points which have been laid down as const.i.tuting excellence in fict.i.tious narrative," that they are "improbable," full of "glaring anachronisms and geographical blunders," "not well shaded and distinguished in character,"
possessing heroines such as "the mistresses of Tristan and Lancelot"
[may G.o.d a.s.soil Dunlop!] who are "women of abandoned character,"
"highly reprehensible in their moral tendency," "equalled by the most insipid romance of the present day as a fund of amus.e.m.e.nt." In those days even Scott thought it prudent to limit his praise of Malory"s book to the statement that "it is written in pure old English, and many of the wild adventures which it contains are told with a simplicity bordering on the sublime." Of Malory--thanks to the charms of his own book in the editions of Southey, of the two editors in 12mo, of Wright and of Sir Edward Strachey, not to mention the recent and stately issues given by Dr Sommer and Professor Rhys--a better idea has long prevailed, though there are some gainsayers. But of the originals, and of the Legend as a whole, the knowledge is too much limited to those who see in that legend only an opportunity for discussing texts and dates, origins and national claims. Its extraordinary beauty, and the genius which at some time or other, in one brain or in many, developed it from the extremely meagre materials which are all that can be certainly traced, too often escape attention altogether, and have hardly, I think, in a single instance obtained full recognition.
[Sidenote: _The theories of its origin._]
Yet however exaggerated the attention to the _Quellen_ may have been, however inadequate the attention to the actual literary result, it would be a failure in duty towards the reader, and disrespectful to those scholars who, if not always in the most excellent way, have contributed vastly to our knowledge of the subject, to finish this chapter without giving something on the question of origins itself. I shall therefore conclude it with a brief sketch of the chief opinions on the subject, and with an indication of those to which many years"
reading have inclined myself.
The theories, not to give them one by one as set forth by individual writers, are in the main as follows:--
[Sidenote: _Celtic._]
I. That the Legend is, not merely in its first inception, but in main bulk, Celtic, either (_a_) Welsh or (_b_) Armorican.
[Sidenote: _French._]
II. That it is, except in the mere names and the vaguest outline, French.
[Sidenote: _English._]
III. That it is English, or at least Anglo-Norman.
[Sidenote: _Literary._]