,' 'Tristan and
Isolde,' and 'Parsifal.' Of still later versions, we may mention the
'King Arthur' of J. Comyns Carr, which has been presented on the stage
by Sir Henry Irving; and 'Under King Constantine,' by Katrina Trask,
whose hero is the king whom tradition names as the successor of the
heroic Arthur, "Imperator, Dux Bellorum."

This poetic material is manifestly a living force in the literature of
the present day. And we may well remind ourselves of the rule which
should govern our verdict in regard to the new treatments of the theme
as they appear. This century-old 'Dichterstoff,' this poetic
treasure-store through which speaks the voice of the race, this great
body of accumulated poetic material, is a heritage; and it is evident
that whoever attempts any phase of this theme may not treat such
subject-matter capriciously, nor otherwise than in harmony with its
inherent nature and spirit. It is recognized that the stuff whereof
great poetry is made is not the arbitrary creation of the poet, and
cannot be manufactured to order. "Genuine poetic material," it has been
said, "is handed down in the imagination of man from generation to
generation, changing its spirit according to the spirit of each age,
and reaching its full development only when in the course of time the
favorable conditions coincide." Inasmuch as the subject-matter of the
Arthurian legends is not the creation of a single poet, nor even of many
poets, but is in fact the creation of the people,--indeed, of many
peoples widely separated in time and space, and is thus in a sense the
voice of the race,--it resembles in this respect the Faust legends,
which are the basis of Goethe's world-poem; or the mediaeval visions of a
future state, which found their supreme and final expression in Dante's
'Divina Commedia,' which sums up within itself the art, the religion,
the politics, the philosophy, and the view of life of the Middle Ages.

Whether the Arthurian legends as a whole have found their final and
adequate expression in Tennyson's 'Idylls of the King,' or whether it
was already too late, when the Laureate wrote, to create from primitive
ideas so simple a poem of the first rank, is not within the province of
this essay to discuss. But manifestly, any final judgment in regard to
the treatment of this theme as a whole, or any phase of the theme, is
inadequate which leaves out of consideration the history of the
subject-matter, and its treatment by other p