[Footnote 58: And contrariwise the Welsh _Peredur_ (_Mabinogion_, _ed.
cit._, 81) has only a possible allusion to the Graal story, while the
English _Sir Percivale_ (_Thornton Romances_, ed. Halliwell, Camden
Society, 1844) omits even this.]

[Sidenote: _How it perfects the story._]

Another genius, that of Walter Map (by hypothesis, as before),
described and worked out different capabilities in the story. By the
idea, simple, like most ideas of genius, of making Lancelot, the
father, at once the greatest knight of the Arimathean lineage, and
unable perfectly to achieve the Quest by reason of his sin, and
Galahad the son, inheritor of his prowess but not of his weakness, he
has at once secured the success of the Quest in sufficient accordance
with the original idea and the presence of abundant purely romantic
interest as well. And at the same time by connecting the sin which
disqualifies Lancelot with the catastrophe of Arthur, and the
achieving of the Quest itself with the weakening and breaking up of
the Round Table (an idea insisted upon no doubt, by Tennyson, but
existent in the originals), a dramatic and romantic completeness has
been given to the whole cycle which no other collection of mediaeval
romances possesses, and which equals, if it does not exceed, that of
any of the far more apparently regular epics of literary history. It
appears, indeed, to have been left for Malory to adjust and bring out
the full epic completeness of the legend: but the materials, as it was
almost superfluous for Dr Sommer to show by chapter and verse, were
all ready to his hand. And if (as that learned if not invariably
judicious scholar thinks) there is or once was somewhere a _Suite_ of
Lancelot corresponding to the _Suite de Merlin_ of which Sir Thomas
made such good use, it is not improbable that we should find the
adjustment, though not the expression, to some extent anticipated.

[Sidenote: _Nature of this perfection._]

At any rate, the idea is already to hand in the original romances of
our present period; and a wonderfully great and perfect idea it is.
Not the much and justly praised arrangement and poetical justice of
the Oresteia or of the story of Oedipus excel the Arthuriad in what
used to be called "propriety" (which has nothing to do with
prudishness), while both are, as at least it seems to me, far
inferior in varied and poignant interest. That the attainment of the
Graal, the healing of the maimed king, and th