be chiefly considered, as being the most interesting in their bearing
on English fiction.

In the early part of the twelfth century, Walter Mapes, Archdeacon of
Oxford, while travelling in France, became possessed of a book written
in the British or Armoric language, which treated of the history of
kings of Britain, and was undoubtedly even at that time of considerable
antiquity. Little is known concerning this curious work. It related the
fabulous martial deeds of British kings, of whose existence there is no
previous record, their victories over giants and dragons, and the
various supernatural influences to which they were subject. Hence comes
the story of King Lear and of Jack the Giant-Killer, and here are first
met the characters of King Arthur and the enchanter Merlin. This book
having been translated into Latin by Geoffrey of Monmouth, a
Benedictine monk, at once attained a great popularity and reputation;
and for several centuries was universally accepted as true history. A
number of metrical romances soon appeared to gratify the taste which
Geoffrey's chronicle had excited, and in the first half of the
thirteenth century the same stories began to be written in prose. From
this time until the middle of the fifteenth century most of what we now
call romantic fiction was produced, although many imitations and
translations appeared in England for more than a century afterward. The
exact dates of the different romances and the names of their authors
cannot be positively established, as the early copies were undated, and
the names prefixed to them are believed to be fictitious. During this
period were given to the world, among many others, the romances of
Merlin the Enchanter, of Launcelot du Lac, of Meliadus, of his son
Tristram, of Gyron le Courtoys, of Perceval le Gallois, and, finally,
that of the Saint Gréal, in which the whole body of knights-errant are
represented, probably by some monkish writer, in the search for the