Arthur and Lancelot: in face of
the behaviour of the bastard of Normandy, it would be difficult to tax
the exploits attributed to those heroes with improbability. The
numberless epic romances in which they delighted had no resemblance with
the "Beowulf" of old. These stories were no longer filled with mere
deeds of valour, but also with acts of courtesy; they were full of love
and tenderness. Even in the more Germanic of their poems, in "Roland,"
the hero is shaken by his emotions, and is to be seen shedding tears.
Far greater is the part allotted to the gentler feelings in the epics of
a subsequent date, in those written for the English Queen Eleanor, by
Benoit de Sainte More in the twelfth century, which tell for the first
time of the loves of Troilus and Cressida; in those dedicated to Arthur
and his knights, where the favour of the mortal deities of whom the
heroes are enamoured, is responsible for more feats of chivalry than is
the search after the mysterious Grail.

They can take Constantinople, or destroy the Roman armies; they can
fight green giants and strange monsters, besiege castles of steel, put
traitors to death, and escape even the evil practices of enchanters; but
they cannot conquer their passions. All the enemies they have in common
with Beowulf, be they men or armies, monsters or sorcerers, they can
fight and subdue; but enemies unknown to the Gothic warrior oppose them
now more effectually than giants, stormy seas, or armed battalions;
enemies that are always present, that are not to be destroyed in battle
nor left behind in flight: their own indomitable loves and desires. What
would the conqueror of Grendel have thought of such descendants? One
word in his story answers the question: "Better it is," says he, "for
every man, that he avenge his friend than that he mourn much." This is
the nearest approach to tenderness discoverable in the whole epic of
"Beowulf."

In this contest between heroes differing so greatly in their notion of
the duties and possibilities of life with whom do we side, we of to-day?
With Beowulf or with Lancelot? Which of the two has survived? Which of
them is nearest of kin to us? Under various names and under very
different conditions, Lancelot still continues to live in our thoughts
and to play his part in our stories. We shall find him in the pages of
Walter Scott; he is present in the novels of George Eliot. For better or
for worse, the literature begun in England by the