a little backwash
also, by reason of which almost the last glow we saw in the west
was in fourth century Gaul, in the literary renaissance there
which centers round the name of Ausonius. Now in later history
we find every important French cycle tending to be followed by
one in England: as Chaucer followed Jean de Meung; Shakespeare,
Ronsard and the Pleyade; Dryden and Pope, Moliere and Racine;
Wordsworth and Shelley, the Revolution. And we have seen China
wake in 420; and we have noted, in the first of these lectures,
the strange fact that whenever China 'gets busy,' we see a sort
of reflexion of it among the Celts of the west. And we shall
come presently to one of the most curious episodes in history,--
the Irish Renaissance in the sixth century: when all Europe else
was dead and buried under night and confusion, and Ireland only,
standing like a white pillar to the west, a blazing beacon of
culture and creative genius. Now if you see a wave rising in
fourth-century Gaul, and a wave breaking into glorious foam in
sixth- and seventh-century Ireland,--what would you suspect?--
Why, naturally, that it was the same wave, and had flowed through
the country that lies between: common sense would tell you to
expect something of a Great Age in fifth- and early sixth-century
Britain. And then comes tradition,--which is nine times out of
ten the truest vehicle of history,--and shouts that your
expectations are correct. For within this time came Arthur.

You know that in the twelfth century Geoffrey of Monmouth
published what he claimed to be a History of the Kings of Britain
from the time of the coming there of the Trojans; and that it
was he mainly who was responsible for floating the Arthurian
Legend on to the wide waters of European literature. What
percentage of history there may be in his book; how much of it
he did not "make out of whole cloth," but founded on genuine
Welsh or Breton traditions, is at present unknowable;--the
presumption being that it is not much. But here is a curious
fact that I only came on this week. The Romans were expelled
from Britain in 410, remember. Arthur passed from the world of
mortals on the night after Camlan, that

"last weird battle in the west,"

when

"All day long the noise of battle rolled
Among the mountains by the wintry sea,
Till all King Arthur's Table, man by man,
Had fallen in Lyonnesse about their lord
King Arthur."

Now the