n poetry, "Queen Gwynnevar's Round" and
"The Quest of the Sangreal" (1864). He was converted to the Roman
Catholic faith on his death-bed.

[21] Given in Palgrave's "Golden Treasury," second series. Rossetti
wrote of Dobell's ballad in 1868: "I have always regarded that poem as
being one of the finest, of its length, in any modern poet; ranking with
Keats' 'La Belle Dame sans Merci' and the other masterpieces of the
condensed and hinted order so dear to imaginative minds." The use of the
family name Keith in Rossetti's "Rose Mary" was a coincidence. His poem
was published (1854) some years before Dobell's. He thought of
substituting some other name for Keith, but could find none to suit him,
and so retained it.

[22] _Cf._ Matthew Arnold's "St. Brandan," suggested by a passage in the
old Irish "Voyage of Bran." The traitor Judas is allowed to come up from
hell and cool himself on an iceberg every Christmas night because he had
once given his cloak to a leper in the streets of Joppa.

[23] "Ballads and Songs," London, 1895.

[24] "New Ballads," London, 1897.

[25] "Victorian Poets." By E. C. Stedman. New York, 1886 (tenth ed.),
p. 155.

[26] This famous lyric, one of the "inserted" songs in "The Princess,"
was inspired by the note of a bugle on the Lakes of Killarney.

[27] See vol. i., pp. 146-47. Dryden, like Milton, had designs upon
Arthur. See introduction to the first canto of "Marmion":

"--Dryden, in immortal strain,
Had raised the Table Round again,
But that a ribald king and court
Bade him toil on, to make them sport."

[28] For a discussion of these and similar matters and a bibliography of
Arthurian literature, the reader should consult Dr. H. Oskar Sommer's
scholarly reprint and critical edition of "Le Morte Darthur. By Syr
Thomas Malory," three vols., London, 1889-91.

[29] Two of them, however, had been printed privately in 1857 under the
title of "Enid and Nimue": the true and the false. "Nimue" was the first
form of Vivien.

[30] Matthew Arnold writes in one of his letters; "I have a strong sense
of the irrationality of that period [the Middle Ages] and of the utter
folly of those who take it seriously and play at restoring it; still it
has poetically the greatest charm and refreshment possible for me. The
fault I find with Tennyson, in his 'Idylls of the King,' is that the
peculiar charm of the Middle Age he does not give in them. There is
something magical abou