Charlemagne's historical annexations being paralleled by a mythical expedition of Arthur, which reached as far as Rome, and brought the capital of the West under his sway. And the career of Charlemagne, like that of Arthur, ends in mystery; as Arthur (according to the legendary epitaph on his tomb at Glastonbury, 'Hic 'jacet Arturus rex quondam rexque futurus') passes 'to come again,' so Charlemagne is described as sitting in Odenberg, crowned and armed, till the time of his second coming to deliver Christendom from Antichrist. The resemblance of the two cycles runs into a number of minor details: in both the chief knight passes through a prolonged term of madness, and even the magic brand. Excalibur has its match in Charlemagne's famous sword Durindana. Moreover, the moral systems of the two cycles are closely allied. In each Shine martial Faith and Courtesy's clear star; and in each "noble men may see and learn the noble acts of chivalry, the gentle and virtuous deeds that some knights used in those days by which they came to honour, and how they that were vicious were punished and oft put to shame and rebuke" (Caxton's Preface to Malory's Morte d'Arthur). Such difference of teaching as is to be noticed between the two cycles may be due in great part to the different channels through which they have come down to us. Ariosto ancl Bojardo, the Italian romancists, in whose pages we now read the Carlovingian story, gave the brilliant and vivid colour of their own times, and of the civilization of the later middle age, to the rude material they found in the early legends. Malory, the compiler of the English Morte d'Arthur, brings us into closer and fresher contact with the original form and spirit of the ancient legends. Thus we find that the Romance of the Round Table, far ruder as a work of skill than the Italian presentment of Charlemagne and his Paladins, has more of the simplicity and inconsistency of childhood; the ascetic element is more strongly and quaintly developed; it presents a higher conception of the nature of woman, a more distinct sense of sin, and a broader, more manly view of human life and duty. in History. The mythical tales that have gathered round the King Arthur name of Charlemagne deal with a personage whose conquests are matters of authentic history; but regarding Arthur little of real fact has been ascertained; all that modern research can tell us with any certainty is that there was in the sixth century a war-leader in Britain called Artus or Arthur, who, after the departure of the Romans, headed the tribes of Cumbria and Strathclyde (the old divisions of Western Britain, stretching from the Severn to the Clyde) against the encroaching Saxons from the east and the Picts and Scots from the north; and that five or six centuries later “the name of King Arthur had come to stand for an ideal of royal wisdom, chivalric virtue, and knightly prowess which was recognised alike in England, France, and Germany." Cycle in The Arthurian cycle has afforded materials for many The Arthurian romancists and poets, both English and foreign: its English development in English literature may be clearly traced. The earliest legends of Arthur are to be found in the Welsh Tales, in the Breton and German Romances, and Literature. in Chronicles such as that of St. Gildas de Ruys, De Excidio Britanniae. Between 1130 and 1147 Geoffrey of Monmouth, "the veracious Geoffrey," gave a long account of Arthur's exploits in his Historia Britonum, a fabulous Latin chronicle of the Cymry and their kings. The popularity of this History gave a new currency to the stories: Geoffrey's work was turned into French verse by Gaimar, and also, with many additional details about Arthur, by Wace, a Jersey poet. The legends up to this point recounted deeds of mere animal courage and passion. About 1196 Walter Map (or Mapes), a chaplain to Henry II., and subsequently Archdeacon of Oxford, gave spiritual life to the whole system of Arthurian romance by blending with it the legend of the Quest of the Holy Graal. The 'Holy Graal' (or Grail, as Tennyson spells it) was, we are told, the cup or dish used by Christ at the Last Supper, and subsequently by Joseph of Arimathea to catch the blood of Christ as He was hanging wounded on the cross. The word grail, old French graal, low Latin gradale, is allied to the Greek κрητýр, a cup. The derivation of Sanegraal, from Sanguis realis (the real blood of Christ), is erroneous, and arose from a wrong spelling and division of letters, sancgraal being mistakenly written san grael, and then sang real. Joseph brought the dish with him to Glastonbury, in England, where it was lost; the search for it, the * * There is still preserved in the cathedral of Genoa a hexagonal dish, of the colour and brilliance of emerald; it is called Sacro Catino, and local traditions maintain that this is the original grail. Quest of the Holy Grail,' was undertaken by many of the knights of the Round Table, and to some of them a sight of it, accompanied by the holy sacrament and the Real Presence of Christ, was granted. The legend thus became an allegory of a man's striving after a perfect knowledge of Truth and of God, to be gained only by a life of ideal purity. (See Tennyson's Idyll of The Holy Grail.) From the introduction of the Grail legend we must date the elevation of King Arthur to the place he has since held as a Christian monarch ruling over an essentially religious people. In 1470 Sir Thomas Malory (or 'Malleor,' as Tennyson calls him) used the materials he found in "many noble volumes; . . in Welsh be many and also in French and some in English" for the making of his "book of King Arthur and of his noble knights of the Round Table." The book is called by Caxton, who printed it in 1485, "thys noble and Joyous book entytled le Morte Darthur"; and in his preface thereto the printer says that it contains "many joyous and pleasant histories and noble and renowned acts of humanity, gentleness and chivalry." Malory's book is for the modern reader the most accessible and best known storehouse of Arthurian legend. Upon this Tennyson has founded some of his Idylls of the King. The closeness with which the poet has in many instances followed his original is illustrated by the parallel passages quoted from Malory in the Notes at the end of this volume. Other poets have taken, or thought of taking, Arthur as the central hero of their chief work. Spenser, in his Faerie Queene, makes 'Prince Arthure' the type of 'hagnificence,' i.e. 'noble doing'; and under the figure of Arthure's knights represents the various virtues striving heavenwards and helped on their way by their Prince. Milton originally intended to take as the heroes of a great national epic— indigenas reges Arturumque etiam sub terris bella moventem, but, sharing the common doubt of most writers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as to "who he was and whether any such reigned in history," rejected the Round Table as a subject in favour of the Loss of Paradise. Blackmore wrote two epics-Prince Arthur, in ten books, and King Arthur, in twelve books. Dryden produced a dramatic opera which he entitled King Arthur, but it was really nothing more than an allegory of the events of the reign of Charles II. In his Essay on Satire he gives a melancholy account of a projected epic, with either King Arthur or Edward the Black Prince as hero. In allusion to these writers, Sir Walter Scott, in his Introduction to Marmion, tells how the "mightiest chiefs of British song" felt the fascination of the Arthurian legends They gleam through Spenser's elfin dream, And Dryden, in immortal strain, Had raised the Table Round again, But that a ribald king and court Bade him toil on to make them sport. Scott himself felt a similar attraction towards this "ancient minstrel strain." He edited, with notes, Thomas the Rhymer's metrical romance, Sir Tristrem, |