seph of Arimathea_, the work
of the abominable Lonelich or Lovelich, etc., deal mainly with another
branch of previous questions--things bearable as introductions,
fillings-up, and so forth, but rather jejune in themselves. The Scots
_Lancelot_ is later than Malory himself, and of very little interest.
Layamon's account, the oldest that we have, adds little (though what
little it does add is not unimportant) to Geoffrey of Monmouth and Wace;
and tells what it has to tell with nearly as little skill in narrative
as in poetry. Only the metrical _Morte_--from which, it would appear,
Malory actually transprosed some of his most effective passages in the
manner in which genius transproses or transverses--has, for that reason,
for its dealings with the catastrophe, and for the further opportunity
of comparison with Tennyson, interest of the higher kind. But before we
come to Malory himself it is desirable to turn to the branches--the
chapels, as we have called them, to the cathedral--which he also, in
some cases at least, utilised in the _magnum opus_ of English prose
romance.

These outliers were rather more fortunate, probably for no more
recondite reason than that the French originals (from which they were in
almost every instance certainly taken) were finished in themselves. Of
the special Gawain cycle or sub-cycle we have two romances in pure
metrical form, and more than two in alliterative, which are above the
average in interest. _Ywain and Gawain_, one of the former, is derived
directly or indirectly from the _Chevalier au Lyon_ of Chrestien de
Troyes; and both present some remarkable affinities with the unknown
original of the "Sir Beaumains" episode of Malory, and, through it, with
Tennyson's _Gareth and Lynette_. The other, _Lybius Disconus (Le Beau
Deconnu)_ is also concerned with that courteous nephew of Arthur who, in
later versions of the main story, is somewhat sacrificed to Lancelot.
For a "_real_ romance," as it calls itself (though it is fair to say
that in the original the word means "royal"), of the simpler kind but
extremely well told, there are not many better metrical specimens than
_Ywain and Gawain_, but it has less character-interest, actual or
possible, than those which have been commented on. The hero, King
Urien's son, accepts an adventure in which another knight of the Table,
Sir Colgrevance, has fared ill, after it has been told in a conversation
at court which is joined in first by the Queen a