refusing to depart from his preconceived idea, and making that idea up
of certain things taken from the _Iliad_, certain from the _AEneid_,
certain from the _Divina Commedia_, certain from _Paradise Lost_,--if
he runs over the list and says to the _chanson_, "Are you like Homer
in this point? Can you match me Virgil in that?" the result will be
that the _chanson_ will fail to pass its examination.

But if, with some knowledge of literature in the wide sense, and some
love for it, he sits down to take the _chansons_ as they are, and
judge them on their merits and by the law of their own poetical state,
then I think he will come to a very different conclusion. He will say
that their kind is a real kind, a thing by itself, something of which
if it were not, nothing else in literature could precisely supply the
want. And he will decide further that while the best of them are
remarkably good of their kind, few of them can be called positively
bad in it. And yet again, if he has been fortunately gifted by nature
with that appreciation of form which saves the critic from mere
prejudice and crotchet, from mere partiality, he will, I believe, go
further still, and say that while owing something to spirit, they owe
most to form itself, to the form of the single-assonanced or
mono-rhymed _tirade_, assisted as it is by the singular beauty of Old
French in sound, and more particularly by the sonorous recurring
phrases of the _chanson_ dialect. No doubt much instruction and some
amusement can be got out of these poems as to matters of fact: no
doubt some passages in _Roland_, in _Aliscans_, in the _Couronnement
Loys_, have a stern beauty of thought and sentiment which deserves
every recognition. But these things are not all-pervading, and they
can be found elsewhere: the clash and clang of the _tirade_ are
everywhere here, and can be found nowhere else.

CHAPTER III.

THE MATTER OF BRITAIN.

ATTRACTIONS OF THE ARTHURIAN LEGEND. DISCUSSIONS ON THEIR
SOURCES. THE PERSONALITY OF ARTHUR. THE FOUR WITNESSES.
THEIR TESTIMONY. THE VERSION OF GEOFFREY. ITS LACUNAE. HOW
THE LEGEND GREW. WACE. LAYAMON. THE ROMANCES PROPER. WALTER
MAP. ROBERT DE BORRON. CHRESTIEN DE TROYES. PROSE OR VERSE
FIRST? A LATIN GRAAL-BOOK. THE MABINOGION. THE LEGEND
ITSELF. THE STORY OF JOSEPH OF ARIMATHEA. MERLIN. LANCELOT.
THE LEGEND BECOMES DRAMATIC. STORIES OF GAWAIN AND OTHER
KNIGHTS. SIR TRISTRAM. HIS STOR