ried off by the king of the land from which no man returnsthat is, the kingdom of the dead. This story, which recalls the classical myth of Proserpine, has left its traces in Welsh literature and is doubtless the original of the story of Guinevere's abduction by Mordred in Geoffrey of Monmouth. In Chrétien's poem it is as the rescuer of the queen from this mythical captor who now has taken on, however, some of the characteristics of a mediæval monarch of the more indifferent type-such as King John of England, for example—that Lancelot establishes his claim on her gratitude, and gratitude in the Middle Ages.meant substantial favors. But whatever differences in detail there may be between the story of Lancelot and Guinevere as Chrétien started it and the more recent form with which the nineteenth century was rendered familiar, the essential thing is that the queen was now provided with a lover who in his relations to his mistress was expected to conduct himself according to the requirements of fashionable society in the latter part of the twelfth century.

With the prodigious vitality, however, which the Arthurian legend had gained in the period of which I am speaking, its development was not to stop here. Nowhere more clearly than in the history of legends do we see the law of life exemplified, that the strong absorbs the weak, and so we find the story of Arthur now attracting within its orbit all the originally independent elements of tradition of the Middle Ages with a power hardly inferior to that of the legend of Helen in the days of ancient Greece. The next element of this character which was slowly but surely drawn into the body of Arthurian romance was the story of the Grail. Here as in the cases already mentioned, the work was begun by Chrétien de Troyes. In the last of his poems, written about 1174, namely, "Conte del Graal," in the course of his search for adventure Perceval, a knight of Arthur's court, comes to a castle where the Grail a sort of dishfigures among other mysterious talismans that are borne through the hall. In Chrétien's poem, however, there is nothing religious in the conception of the Grail. It is simply one of the wonderful things, probably of Celtic origin and rooted in folk-lore, with which Arthurian romance abounds. Very soon, however, in the development of the legend - among other places in a continua

tion of this very poem of Chrétien's by another hand-the stories concerning this strange dish with its magical properties came to be confounded with Christian legends concerning Joseph of Arimathea and the dish used at the Last Supper by our Lord and his disciples. During the last quarter of the twelfth century a French poet named Robert de Borron, who probably resided in England, took a leading part in connecting these stories, as he did in the development of the Merlin legend. The whole story was soon localized at Glastonbury and used to glorify the origin of the English church. The Grail thus becomes identified with the sacred dish of the Last Supper and takes on the name of the Holy Grail. But when the business of Arthur's court was the quest of adventure, what worthier object of endeavor could there be than this most sacred of vessels which had disappeared from human view? And so under the influence of the spirit which inspired the Crusades and more particularly the founding of the Order of the Knights Templar - with which Order there is reason to believe that the origin of the Holy Grail romances is closely connected we have a new branch of Arthurian romance started on its way. The ascetic spirit, however, which governed the Knights Templar movement required here a new hero. Only a knight of unspotted chastity could succeed in such a quest and so Perceval, the knight with whom the Grail adventure had originally been connected, is in time set aside and a new hero to suit these requirements is invented, namely, Galahad, son of Lancelot.

With the invention of the story of Lancelot and Guinevere and the legend of the Holy Grail the main lines of growth of Arthurian romance have been settled. In the closing years, however, of the twelfth century long romances in prose, in part based on earlier poems, begin to appear by the side of those in verse and in a short while it is the prose romances that engage the best activities in Arthurian fiction. Five great romances in this form thus came into existence about the end of the twelfth century or during the early years of the thirteenth, each dealing with some fundamental branch of Arthurian story. First of all, we have the early history of the Holy Grail before it became the object of quest among Arthur's knights. Next, we have the

story of the enchanter, Merlin, and his relations with Arthur. In the third place comes the history of Lancelot and his love affair with Guinevere during the period of its prosperity. This includes a prose version of Chrétien's "Conte de la Charrette." Then we have the quest of the Holy Grail by Galahad and the other knights and finally the "Mort Arthur," which tells of the discovery of the queen's adultery, the war with Lancelot, the treason of Mordred and the end of the Table Round.

Many Arthurian poems have doubtless been lost, but the authors of these prose-romances do not seem to have simply turned into prose what they found in the metrical romances. They draw apparently directly from popular tradition also and add largely from their own invention. Their works are long and full of digressions and repetitions of episodes so as to render them, despite the good material they contain, difficult reading even to the professional student. The Lancelot proper especially, which has been rendered immortal by Dante's "Paolo and Francesca," is enormously long, being approached in this respect by no modern work of fiction perhaps except "Clarissa Harlowe." They are written in a style of considerable elegance and set forth the ideals and manners of chivalry with an amplitude which surpasses that of the romances in verse.

The five romances I have enumerated above were in all probability the compositions of different men. Moreover, it is quite likely, and in the case of the Lancelot proper, at any rate, one may say, certain, that more than one hand contributed to the composition of the individual romances. The Middle Ages had no conception of literary property and no one in that period hesitated to take hold of the work even of a contemporary and amplify it or abridge it to suit his tastes. However this may be, by about the year 1220 all five of these romances (after undergoing many changes and interpolations) had come to be united in one vast book known from the hero who plays the leading rôle in it as "Lancelot du Lac."' Romances in prose of enormous

It appears that of the romances that make up this work there existed two redactions varying considerably in some of the divisions or "branches" of the story. They are known respectively as the Walter Map and Robert de Borron cycles. Of these redactions only the former is preserved entire.

length concerning the other heroes of Arthur's court, such as Tristan, Guiron le Courtois and the rest, were composed during the course of the thirteenth century, but "Lancelot du Lac" is without question the most notable book in Arthurian prose fiction.

In conclusion I will say that it is through these prose romances that the Arthurian legend made its way into modern literature. By the fifteenth century the metrical romances were practically obsolete. This was due, no doubt, partly to the fact that their language was more difficult to understand than that of the prose romances, partly to the fact that a conscious effort to set forth the manners and virtues of chivalry is even more strongly marked in the latter than in the former, and lastly, perhaps, to the fact that the mass of mankind will always prefer prose to verse. The place which the prose romances occupied in the life of the upper classes of Europe down to the middle of the sixteenth century is shown in the magnificent ornamentation which has been lavished on so many of the copies of these works that have come down to modern times. I have myself read in the British Museum the last division of the Lancelot du Lac romance, viz. the "Mort Arthur," in a beautiful illuminated manuscript which belonged successively to Elizabeth Woodville, Queen of Edward IV, and to Lady Jane Grey, and which bears on the fly leaf the autograph signature of each of these illustrious ladies. It is very characteristic of the Middle Ages that in this copy which was evidently prepared for people of the highest rank one finds among the vignettes which border the front page pictures of a brutal realism which would insure the prohibition of the transmission of the book through the United States mails.

As soon as printing was invented, the resources of the new art were employed to perpetuate these favorite romances, but by the latter part of the sixteenth century with the change of taste which the Renaissance had gradually wrought, Arthurian fiction had gone out of favor and ceased to be printed. What the original works had not been able to do for the story of the great hero was accomplished however by Malory's "Morte d' Arthur," that famous compendium of Arthurian romance which its author completed in the year 1470 and which fifteen years

later constituted one of the earliest glories of Caxton's press. The "Morte d' Arthur," indeed, is the real bridge by which Arthur and his knights effected a happy, nay, even a triumphant passage, from the Middle Ages to modern times. Whilst the original French romances have sunk into oblivion except for specialists, many a nineteenth century poet has resorted to the "Morte d' Arthur" for old materials into which he might breathe the life of modern thought and sentiment. It was above all, however, a day of note in the history of English literature when Leigh Hunt put into the hands of Alfred Tennyson a cheap copy of Malory's work. From the consequences of that gift it is manifest to the world that in the realm of poetry at least, which after all perhaps is the realm best worth ruling over, the inscription on Arthur's tomb was no mere lying epitaph: Hic jacet Arthurus Rex, quondam Rex que futurus.

J. DOUGLAS BRUCE

The University of Tennessee