he Middle Ages, and
becoming the source of a great stream of poetry that has flowed without
interruption down to our own day.

Sixty years after the 'Historia Britonum' appeared, and when the English
poet Layamon wrote his 'Brut' (A.D. 1205), which was a translation of
Wace, as Wace was a translation of Geoffrey, the theme was engrossing
the imagination of Europe. It had absorbed into itself the elements of
other cycles of legend, which had grown up independently; some of these,
in fact, having been at one time of much greater prominence. Finally, so
vast and so complicated did the body of Arthurian legend become, that
summaries of the essential features were attempted. Such a summary was
made in French about 1270, by the Italian Rustighello of Pisa; in
German, about two centuries later, by Ulrich Fueterer; and in English by
Sir Thomas Malory in his 'Morte d'Arthur,' finished "the ix. yere of the
reygne of kyng Edward the Fourth," and one of the first books published
in England by Caxton, "emprynted and fynysshed in th'abbey Westmestre
the last day of July, the yere of our Lord MCCCCLXXXV." It is of
interest to note, as an indication of the popularity of the Arthurian
legends, that Caxton printed the 'Morte d'Arthur' eight years before he
printed any portion of the English Bible, and fifty-three years before
the complete English Bible was in print. He printed the 'Morte d'Arthur'
in response to a general "demaund"; for "many noble and dyvers gentylmen
of thys royame of England camen and demaunded me many and oftymes
wherefore that I have not do make and enprynte the noble hystorye of the
saynt greal, and of the moost renomed crysten kyng, fyrst and chyef of
the thre best crysten and worthy, kyng Arthur, whyche ought moost to be
remembred emonge us Englysshe men tofore al other crysten kynges."

Nor did poetic treatment of the theme then cease. Dante, in the 'Divine
Comedy,' speaks by name of Arthur, Guinevere, Tristan, and Launcelot. In
that touching interview in the second cycle of the Inferno between the
poet and Francesca da Rimini, which Carlyle has called "a thing woven
out of rainbows on a ground of eternal black," Francesca replies to
Dante, who was bent to know the primal root whence her love for Paolo
gat being:--

"One day
For our delight, we read of Launcelot,
How him love thralled. Alone we were, and no
Suspicion near us. Oft-times by that reading
O