n, who gave in French
language to French, and not only French literature, the pattern of a
heroine.

There is not, I think, any ancient authority for the rather commonplace
suggestion, unwisely adopted by Tennyson, that Guinevere fell in love
with Lancelot when he was sent as an ambassador to fetch her; thus
merely repeating Iseult and Tristram, and anticipating Suffolk and
Margaret. In fact, according to the best evidence, Lancelot could not
have been old enough, if he was even born. On the contrary, nothing
could be better than the presentation of her introduction to Arthur and
the course of the wooing in the Vulgate--the other "blessed original."
She first sees Arthur as a foe from the walls of besieged Carmelide, and
admires his valour; she has further occasion to admire it when, as a
friend, he rescues her father, showing himself, as what he really was in
his youth, his own best knight. The pair are genuinely in love with each
other, and the betrothal and parting for fresh fight are the most
gracious passages of the _Merlin_ book, except the better version (_v.
sup._) of the love of Merlin himself and the afterwards libelled
Viviane. Anyhow, she was married because she fell in love with him, and
there is no evidence to show that she and Arthur lived otherwise than
happily together. But, if all tales were true, she had no reason to
regard him as a very faithful husband or a blameless man. She may not
have known (for nobody but Merlin apparently did know) the early and
unwitting incest of the King and his half-sister Margause; but the
extreme ease with which he adopted her own treacherous foster-sister,
the "false Guinevere," and his proceedings with the Saxon enchantress
Camilla, were very strong "sets off" to her own conduct. Also she had a
most disagreeable[37] sister-in-law in Morgane-la-Fee. These are not in
the least offered as excuses, but merely as "lights." Indeed Guinevere
never seems to have hated or disliked her husband, though he often gave
her cause; and if, until the great repentance, she thought more lightly
of "spouse-breach" than Lancelot did, that is not uncharacteristic of
women.[38] In fact, she is a very perfect (not of course in the moral
sense) gentlewoman. She is at once popular with the knights, and loses
that popularity rather by Lancelot's fault than by her own, while
Gawain, who remains faithful to her to the bitter end, or at least till
the luckless slaughter of his brethren, declares at