very considerable, even without making allowance for what has been
called the stock character of mediæval composition. That almost all are
directly imitated from the French is probable enough, that most are is
certain: but this matters, for our purpose, nothing at all. That the
imitation was not haphazard or indiscriminate is obvious. Thus, though
we have some, we have not very many representatives of the class which
was the most numerous of all in France--the _chansons de geste_ or
stories of French legendary history, national or family. Except as far
as the Saracens are concerned, they would naturally have less interest
for English hearers. The _Matière de Rome_, again--the legends of
antiquity--though represented, is not very abundant outside of the
universally popular Tale of Troy; and the almost equally popular
Alexander legend does not occupy a very large part of them. What is
perhaps more remarkable is that until Malory exercised his genius upon
"the French book," the more poetical parts of the "matter of Britain"
itself do not seem to have been very much written about in English. The
preliminary stuff about Merlin and Vortigern exists in several
handlings; the foreign campaigns of Arthur seem always (perhaps from
national vanity) to have been popular. The "off"-branches of Tristram
and Percivale, and not a few of the still more episodic romances of
adventures concerning Gawain, Iwain, and other knights, receive
attention. The execrable Lonelich or Lovelich, who preceded Malory a
little, had of course predecessors in handling the other parts of the
Graal story. But the crown and flower of the whole--the inspiration
which connected the Round Table and the Graal and the love of Lancelot
and Guinevere--though, so far as the present writer's reading and
opinion are of any weight, the recent attempts to deprive the
Englishman, Walter Map, of the honour of conceiving it are of no
force--seems to have waited till the fifteenth century--that is to say
the last part of three hundred years--before Englishmen took it up. Most