idenote: _A Latin Graal-book._]

With regard to the Latin Graal-book, the testimony of the romances
themselves is formal enough as to its existence. But no trace of it
has been found, and its loss, if it existed, is contrary to all
probability. For _ex hypothesi_ (and if we take one part of the
statement we must take the rest) it was not a recent composition, but
a document, whether of miraculous origin or not, of considerable age.
Why it should only at this time have come to light, why it should have
immediately perished, and why none of the persons who took interest
enough in it to turn it into the vernacular should have transmitted
his copy to posterity, are questions difficult, or rather impossible,
to answer. But here, again, the wise critic will not peremptorily
deny. He will say that there _may_ be a Latin Graal-book, and that
when that book is produced, and stands the test of examination, he
will believe in it; but that until it appears he will be contented
with the French originals of the end of the twelfth century. Of the
characteristic and probable origins of the Graal story itself, as of
those of the larger Legend of which it forms a part, it will be time
enough to speak when we have first given an account of the general
history as it took shape, probably before the twelfth century had
closed, certainly very soon after the thirteenth had opened. For the
whole Legend--even excluding the numerous ramifications into
independent or semi-independent _romans d'aventures_--is not found in
any single book or compilation. The most extensive, and by far the
best, that of our own Malory, is very late, extremely though far from
unwisely eclectic, and adjusted to the presumed demands of readers,
and to the certain existence in the writer of a fine literary sense of
fitness. It would be trespassing on the rights of a future contributor
to say much directly of Malory; but it must be said here that in what
he omits, as well as in his treatment of what he inserts, he shows
nothing short of genius. Those who call him a mere, or even a bad,
compiler, either have not duly considered the matter or speak
unhappily.

But before we go further it may be well also to say a word on the
Welsh stories, which, though now admitted to be in their present form
later than the Romances, are still regarded as possible originals by
some.

[Sidenote: _The Mabinogion._]

It would hardly be rash to rest the question of the Celtic origin, in