ture it set
down in the midst, covered with a fair silken cloth ('the Kynge yede unto
the syege Peryllous and lyfte vp the clothe, and fonde there the name of
Galahad'), and on it set rich flagons and dishes, strangely wrought and
worked with precious stones, and all about the table the famous knights
in costumes strange to our eyes. . . . Launcelot upon the king's
left,[41] now glancing with fatherly pride upon the youthful Galahad
(occupying the Siege Perilous), now smiling up at Queen Guenevere seated
in the gallery with her maidens . . . . the walls hung with coarse
dull-red cloth and bundles of sweet-smelling herbs hanging here and
there, the floor strewn with fresh green rushes, gathered early that
morning in the meadows below . . . . by the king's side a snow-white
brachet, a golden collar about its neck . . . . and so on and so on.
Imagination forsooth! He must be dull indeed who, reading the book and
standing in the hall, cannot picture the scene for himself.

It is useless to declaim that the great hall of the castle was not
completed until the time of Henry the Third, that it did not exist at all
before the Norman Conquest, that the castle occupied by King Arthur is
more likely to have been on the site of the more ancient one which stood
near the river (now known as Wolvesey), and that the great round table
(eighteen feet in diameter, of stout old English oak, cunningly bolted
together) was made during the former king's reign and was never used by
Arthur at all. What are such crude exactitudes to us? As well object to
the heavy plate-armour worn by the knights--everybody knows this to be an
anachronism of nigh a thousand years. Romantic phantasy and scientific
data are as far apart as the poles, and none but a fool would try to
reconcile them. King Arthur feasted in the castle hall, says Malory, and
so far as our book-hunter is concerned he shall feast there as often and
as long as he likes.

There is a romance, too, about the name of this older castle. _Wolvesey_
its scanty ruins are called to-day, and the antiquarians tell us that
this was originally WULF'S EY, or 'the wolf's isle.' Was it once the
scene of a battue by the young bloods of the tribe to drive out some
wolves that had established themselves there, a fierce fight with axes
and spears at close quarters whilst the rest of the tribe lined the
opposite banks and prevented any escape? Or was it the scene of some
homeric combat _seul a seul_? Perhap