ies of them were carried in manuscript
from country to country; but the more important means of dissemination
were the minstrels, who passed from court to court and land to land,
singing the songs which they had made or heard. In that age there was
little thought of literary proprietorship. The poem belonged to him who
could recall it. And as each minstrel felt free to adopt whatever poem
he found or heard that pleased him, so he felt free also to modify the
incidents thereof, guided only by his experience as to what pleased his
hearers. Hence the countless variations in the treatment of the theme,
and the value of the conclusions that may be drawn as to the moral
sentiment of an age, the quality of whose moral judgments is indicated
by the prevailing tone of the songs which persisted because they
pleased. Unconformable variations, which express the view of an
individual rather than the view of a people, may have come down to us in
an accidentally preserved manuscript; but the songs which were sung by
the poets of all lands give expression to the view of life of the age,
and reveal the morals and the ideals of nations, whose history in this
respect may otherwise be lost to us. What some of these ideals were, as
revealed by this rich store of poetic material which grew up about the
chivalrous and spiritual ideals of the Middle Ages, and what the
corresponding modern ideals are,--what, in brief, some of the hitherto
dimly discerned ethical movements of the past seven hundred years have
in reality been, and whither they seem to be tending,--surely, clear
knowledge on these themes is an end worthy the supreme endeavor of
finished scholars, whose training has made them expert in interpreting
the aspirations of each age, and in tracing the evolution of the ideals
of the past into the realities of the present. And though, as M. Gaston
Paris has said, the path of the Arthurian scholar seems at times to be
an inextricable maze, yet the value of the results already achieved, and
the possibility of still greater results, will doubtless prove a
sufficient encouragement to the several generations of scholars which,
as Dr. Sommer suggests, are needed for the gigantic task.

[Illustration: Signature: Richard Jones]

FROM GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH'S 'HISTORIA BRITONUM'

ARTHUR SUCCEEDS UTHER, HIS FATHER, IN THE KINGDOM OF BRITAIN,
AND BESIEGES COLGRIN

Uther Pendragon being dead, the nobility from several provinces
assembled togethe