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 _Matiere 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
popular of all perhaps, on the principle that in novels the flock "likes
the savour of fresh grass," seem to have been the pure _romans
d'aventures_--quite unconnected or nearly so with each other or with any
of the larger cycles. Those adventures of particular heroes have
sometimes a sort of Arthurian link, but they really have no more to do
with the main Arthurian story than if Arthur were not.

For the present purpose, however, filiation, origin, and such-like
things are of much less importance than the actual stories that get
themselves told to satisfy that demand which in due time is to produce
the supply of the novel. Of these the t