in the _Merlin_, drop out to some extent
later. The whole cycle consists practically of five parts, each of
which in almost all cases exists in divers forms, and more than one of
which overlaps and is overlapped by one or more of the others. These
five are _Merlin_, the _Saint-Graal_, _Lancelot_, the _Quest of the
Saint-Graal_, and the _Death of Arthur_. Each of the first two pairs
intertwines with the other: the last, _Mort Artus_, completes them
all, and thus its title was not improperly used in later times to
designate the whole Legend.

[Sidenote: _The story of Joseph of Arimathea._]

The starting-point of the whole, in time and incident, is the supposed
revenge of the Jews on Joseph of Arimathea for the part he has taken
in the burial of our Lord. He is thrown into prison and remains there
(miraculously comforted, so that the time seems to him but as a day or
two) till delivered by Titus. Then he and certain more or less
faithful Christians set out in charge of the Holy Graal, which has
served for the Last Supper, which holds Christ's blood, and which is
specially under the guardianship of Joseph's son, the Bishop
"Josephes," to seek foreign lands, and a home for the Holy Vessel.
After a long series of the wildest adventures, in which the
personages, whose names are known rather mistily to readers of Malory
only--King Evelake, Naciens, and others--appear fully, and in which
many marvels take place, the company, or the holier survivors of them,
are finally settled in Britain. Here the imprudence of Evelake (or
Mordrains) causes him to receive the "dolorous stroke," from which
none but his last descendant, Galahad, is to recover him fully. The
most striking of all these adventures, related in various forms in
other parts of the Legend, is the sojourn of Naciens on a desert
island, where he is tempted of the devil; while a very great part is
played throughout by the Legend of the Three Trees, which in
successive ages play their part in the Fall, in the first origin of
mankind according to natural birth, not creation, in the building of
the Temple, and in the Passion. This later legend, a wild but very
beautiful one, dominated the imagination of English mediaeval writers
very particularly, and is fully developed, apart from its Arthurian
use, in the vast and interesting miscellany of the _Cursor Mundi_.

[Sidenote: _Merlin._]

But when the Graal and its guardians have been safely established upon
English soil, th