though it
is open to abuse, and was terribly abused in these very ages, is after
all the salvation of things literary, since every age adopting the
first and outer meaning can suit the second and inner to its own taste
and need.

[Footnote 43: See the quotation from Jean Bodel, p. 26, note. The
literature of the Arthurian question is very large; and besides the
drawbacks referred to in the text, much of it is scattered in
periodicals. The most useful recent things in English are Mr Nutt's
_Studies on the Legend of the Holy Grail_ (London, 1888); Professor
Rhys's _Arthurian Legend_ (Oxford, 1891); and the extensive
introduction to Dr Sommer's _Malory_ (London, 1890). In French the
elaborate papers on different parts which M. Gaston Paris brings out
at intervals in _Romania_ cannot be neglected; and M. Loth's surveys
of the subject there and in the _Revue Celtique_ (October 1892) are
valuable. Naturally, there has been a great deal in German, the best
being, perhaps, Dr Koelbing's long introduction to his reprint of
_Arthour and Merlin_ (Leipzig, 1890). Other books will be mentioned in
subsequent notes; but a complete and impartial history of the whole
subject, giving the contents, with strictly literary criticism only,
of all the texts, and merely summarising theories as to origin, &c.,
is still wanting, and sorely wanted. Probably there is still no
better, as there is certainly no more delightful, book on the matter
than M. Paulin Paris's _Romans de la Table Ronde_ (5 vols., Paris,
1868-77). The monograph by M. Cledat on the subject in M. Petit de
Julleville's new _History_ (_v. supra_, p. 23, note) is unfortunately
not by any means one of the best of these studies.]

[Sidenote: _Discussions on their sources._]

That the vitality of the Legend is in part, if not wholly, due to the
strange crossing and blending of its sources, I at least have no
doubt. To discuss these sources at all, much more to express any
definite opinion on the proportions and order of their blending, is a
difficult matter for any literary student, and dangerous withal; but
the adventure is of course not to be wholly shirked here. The matter
has, both in England and abroad, been quite recently the subject of
that rather acrimonious debating by which scholars in modern tongues
seem to think it a point of honour to rival the scholars of a former
day in the classics, though the vocabulary used is less picturesque. A
great deal of this debate, too,