narrator he has the tendency to garrulity, which few mediaeval poets
altogether escaped, but he is by no means without conversational
charm, and in brief sentences abounding in colloquial turns, he leads
us easily on with seldom flagging interest even through those pages
where he is most inclined to be prolix. He is a systematic person with
accurate mental habits, and is keenly alive to the limitations of his
own knowledge. He doubtless often had to bid his common sense console
him with the reflections with which he begins his _Life of St.
Nicholas_:--"Nobody can know everything, or hear everything, or see
everything ... God distributes different gifts to different people.
Each man should show his worth in that which God has given him."

He is extremely careful to give his authorities for his statements,
and has all the shyness of an antiquarian toward facts for which he
has not full proof. Through Breton tales, for example, he heard of the
fairy fountain of Barenton in the forest of Broceliande, where fays
and many another marvel were to be seen, and he determined to visit
it in order to find out how true these stories were. "I went there
to look for marvels. I saw the forest and I saw the land; I sought
marvels, but I found none. A fool I came back, a fool I went; a fool I
went, a fool I came back; foolishness I sought, a fool I hold myself."
[3] The wonders related of Arthur, he tells us, have been recounted so
often that they have become fables. "Not all lies, nor all true, all
foolishness, nor all sense; so much have the storytellers told, and so
much have the makers of fables fabled to embellish their stories that
they have made all seem fable." [4] He omits the prophecies of Merlin
from his narrative, because he does not understand them. "I am not
willing to translate his book, because I do not know how to interpret
it. I would say nothing that was not exactly as I said." [5] To this
scrupulous regard for the truth, absolutely foreign to the ingenious