loss to the world;
she seems to have really loved him, and to have faithfully kept her word
by being with him often. He "could not get out" certainly, but are there
many more desirable things in the outside world than lying with your
head in the lap of the Lady of the Lake while she caresses and talks to
you? "J'en connais des plus malheureux" as the French poet observed of
some one in less delectable case. The author of the _Suite de Merlin_
seems to have been her first maligner. Tennyson, seduced by contrast,
followed and exaggerated the worst view. But I am not sure that the most
"irreligious" thing (as Coleridge would have said) was not the
transformation of her into a mere married lady (with a chateau in
Brittany, and an ordinary knight for her husband) which astounds us in
one of the dullest parts of the Vulgate about Lancelot--the wars with
Claudas.

[30] I have always thought that Spenser (whose dealings with Arthuriana
are very curious, and have never, I think, been fully studied) took this
function of Lancelot to suggest the presentation of his Arthur. But
Lancelot has no--at least no continuous--fairy aid; he is not invariably
victorious, and he is thoroughly human. Spenser's Prince began the
"blamelessness" which grew more trying still in Tennyson's King. (In the
few remarks of this kind made here I am not, I need hardly say, "going
back upon" my lifelong estimate of Tennyson as an almost impeccable
poet. But an impeccable poet is not necessarily an impeccable plot- and
character-monger either in tale-telling or in drama.)

[31] Of this we have unusually strong evidence in the shape of MS.
interlineations, where the name "Percevale" is actually struck out and
that of "Gala[h]ad" substituted above it.

[32] I do not say that this is their _only_ character.

[33] Brittany had much earlier and much more tradition of chivalry than
Wales.

[34] The only fault alleged against Lancelot's person by carpers was
that he was something "pigeon"--or "guardsman"--chested. But Guinevere
showed her love and her wit, and her "valiancy" (for so at least on this
occasion we may translate _vaillant_) by retorting that such a chest was
only big enough--and hardly big enough--for such a heart.

[35] Some of the later "redactors" of the Vulgate may perhaps have
unduly multiplied his madnesses, and have exaggerated his early shyness
a little. But I am not sure of the latter point. It is not only "beasts"
that, as in the gre