two-thirds of the whole compilation; they supply, in fact, more; unless portions of what forms the third volume in the present edition are taken, as seems most probable, from a separate romance known to have existed, of which Sir Galahad was the hero. There would appear also, from the arrangement of the earlier portions of the book, to have been a distinct romance of Balin le Savage, and another of Sir Gareth of Orkney, which Mallory has either worked in bodily, or upon which he drew largely for materials. The result is a not very harmonious whole, somewhat confusing to the reader who has no previous acquaintance with these heroes of chivalry. He will find constant allusions to circumstances not recorded in the work itself, and anticipations of characters and incidents which are not introduced until long after. But Sir Thomas, it must be remembered, was addressing himself to those who might fairly be supposed to be already more or less familiar with the subject which he was reproducing. To imagine a knight or gentleman of the days of Edward IV. to be unacquainted with the history (true or fabulous) of Arthur, and Merlin, and Lancelot, would have been as strange as to suppose an educated Englishman of the present day to know nothing of Wellington or Napoleon. We think, however, that Mr Wright, who edits the present volumes, would have consulted the reader's comfort more, and given him a better chance, as Caxton wished, "to understande bryefly the contente," if he had preserved the old printer's original division into twentyone books (the headings of which supply a very useful clue), instead of following the edition of 1634 in its more arbitrary arrangement into three parts. To attempt to give any continuous outline of what is in fact seven or eight separate stories, would be tedious, if it were not almost impossible; but a slight sketch of the principal heroes, as they appear here and in the Welsh legends, may not be uninteresting. And to begin with the Hero-King himself.

The birth of Arthur, like that of more than one favourite of chivalry, is illegitimate. His father Uther,

Pendragon of Britain, is said in the British legend to have deceived Igraine, wife of the king of Cornwall, by taking (with the help of Merlin) the form of a cloud-in Welsh, gorlas or gorlasar; in the English romance before us, he is said to have visited her in the likeness of the king her husband, whose name is Gorlois. The latter is killed in battle, and Uther is free to wed the object of his passion. In due time Arthur is born, and by Merlin's advice is brought up in secret at a distance from Uther's court. By the advice of the same counsellor, upon Uther's death the Archbishop of Canterbury holds solemn meeting of "all the lords of the realm and gentlemen of armes in the greatest church in London ("whether it were Powlis or not," says the conscientious Sir Thomas, "the Frensshe booke maketh no mention"), to pray that Heaven would "show some miracle who should be rightwise king of this realme." There appears, after mass, against the high altar, "a great stone four square, like to a marble stone, and in the midest thereof was an anvile of steele a foote of height, and therein stooke a fair sword, naked, by the point, and letters of gold were written about the sword that said thus -Who so pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvile, is right wise king borne of England.' The more ambitious of the knights and nobles present-"such as would have been king"-essay the trial. But "none might stir the sword, or move it;" and it is committed to the safe guardianship of ten knights till the rightful claimant shall come. At a great joust held on New Year's-day, the young Sir Kay, Arthur's foster-brother, finds himself without a sword; and Arthur, unable to obtain one for him elsewhere, rides to the churchyard, finds the guardian knights absent at the jousting, and "lightly and fiersly" pulls the charmed weapon from the stone, and brings it to Sir Kay, who recognises it at once, and comes to the very hasty and erroneous conclusion that he "must be king of this land." The true king, however, is of course Arthur himself; who, after many delays and difficulties from the natural jealousy of the lords of the kingdom to "be governed with a boy

of no bloode borne," repeats the test of sovereignty in presence of them all at the great feasts of Candlemas, Easter, and Pentecost successively, and is acknowledged to be "rightwise king." At his coronation at Caerleon, the neighbouring kings who came to the feast were sore disgusted; they said "they had no joy to receive gifts of a berdless boy, that was come of low blood; and sent him word that they would have none of his gifts, and that they were come to give him gifts with hard swords betweene the neck and the shoulders." In vain does Merlin, Arthur's ever-ready counsellor, disclose to them the secret of his birth, that he is "King Uther-Pendragon's son, born in wedlock." Even Merlin's eloquence fails to put the facts of the case in a very favourable light, and the kings are not satisfied. They besiege Arthur in his tower, where happily he was "well vitaled." By the help of his magic sword, Excalibur, he succeeds in defeating them for a while. "It was so bright in his enemies' sight that it gave light like thirty torches; and therewith he put them back, and slew much people." This sudden introduction into the story of the enchanted sword is one of the many instances in which the compiler of the English romance has done his work with very little regard to the unities; for he represents Arthur as first obtaining this miraculous weapon at a subsequent period of his story. Merlin there leads him to the banks of a lake, "which was a faire water and a broade, and in the middes of the lake King Arthur was ware of an arme clothed in white samite, that held a faire sword in the hand." This sword the king obtains as a gift from the damosel of the lake, who dwells there on a rock, wherein is " as faire a place as any is on earth, and as richly beseene," and whom we afterwards find to be apparently the Fairy Nimue, Nineve, or Viviane-for she is called by all these names. She is the Chwblian or Vivlian of the Welsh bards, and plays no inconsiderable part in

the body of romances before us. This good sword Excalibur, or Calibourn, has become quite a proverbial weapon, and a synonyme for everything that is heroic amongst instruments. We ourselves can well remember, in the days of that little thumbed and dogeared two-volume romance we spoke of, a cricket-bat of (as was then thought) immortal reputation, which bore that redoubted name. The note to the French romance of "Merlin" tells us that it is ". un nom Ebrieu," and that the corresponding phrase in French is "très cher fer et acier." The English metrical version of the same romance gives us the following two lines in explanation—

"On Inglis is this writing

Kerve steel and yren and al thing." And Sir Thomas Mallory himself tells us "it is as much to say as cuttesteele." In the Brut y Brenhined, it is paraphrased by Dure Entaille, and hence, no doubt, Count Roland's sword, in the romances of Godefroi de Bouillon and Huon de Bordeaux, borrows its name of Durendal.* Spenser, in his "Faery Queen," calls it by the equivalent of Mordure. According to Lady C. Schreiber and M. de la Villemarqué, the original of the name is Welsh; and Calybourne (under which form it appears in Robert of Gloucester) is only a pardonable attempt of Saxon organs to render such an impossible combination as Caledvwich ("hard-notch"), the original name of the good weapon in one of the tales of the Mabinogion, where it is placed in the list of the king's inestimable treasures in company with his lance Rhongomyant, his dagger Carnwenhau, his ship Prydwen, his shield Wynebgwrthucher, his mantle Gwen (or Llen), and his wife Guenhwyvar-who is placed last, and was certainly a very questionable treasure. These named swords are common in the romances of chivalry, and are usually recorded (as in the case of Sir Gawaine's sword Galatine †) as having been the work of Galant, or Wieland, the smith. From that cunning hand is said to

have come Charlemagne's sword Joyeuse. In the romance of "Huon de Bordeaux" he is said to have forged but three: Huon's sword Durendal, which belonged to Roland; and Courtain-which, we conclude, may be seen to this day in the Tower jewel-room as the Confessor's sword Curtana; but there is at least one other mentioned in the same romance, whose fame is more historical, if not so romantic, as that of Excalibur itself; it was forged originally by one Israhels, and seems to have been-as we should perhaps have guessed from the name of the manufacturer of doubtful quality; but Galant the smith spent a year in re-tempering it, named it Recuite, and it went in succession through the hands of Alexander the Great, Ptolemy, Judas Maccabeus, Vespasian, and two less widelyknown heroes, Comumarans and his son Corbada. The last of this race of weapons must have been Ancient Pistol's redoubtable Hiren, which was a namesake of the sword of Amadis de Gaul; but even this is claimed by a zealous Welsh antiquary as of Celtic extraction; hirian in the old British language signifying "a long slashing sword."*

66

Priceless as was the sword Excalibur, the scabbard had qualities of even more value. "The scabbard is worth ten of the sword," said Merlin, for while ye have the scabbard upon you, ye shall leese no blood, be ye never so sore wounded; therefore keepe well the scabbard alway with you." King Arthur, however, does not take such good care of either sword or scabbard as he should have done. His evil genius in these ro

mances is his half-sister, Morgan la Faye, wife to King Urience of Gore,t who acts the part of the wicked fairy throughout, as Nimue or Viviane does that of the benevolent one. In the romance of Merlin we are told that she had been educated in a nunnery, where she had learned (of all things) magic, which she applies to all kinds of evil purposes. She is a very incarnation of wickedness; only the prompt interference of her son, Sir Ewaine, prevents her from stabbing her husband while he is asleep; insomuch that Sir Ewaine is constrained to say of this amiable parent, "Men say that Merlin was begotten of a divell, but I may say an earthly divell bare me." From pure malice, as it would seem-at least from no cause here assignedshe sets on one Sir Accolon, armed with Excalibur, which by some means she has got into her possession, to fight with and slay Arthur, in whose hand has been substituted a weapon "false, counterfeit, and brittle." Long the king fights against these terrible odds, and is fainting with loss of blood, when the damosel of the lake, who " ever did great goodness to King Arthur and all his knights, by her sorcery and enchantments," appears at the critical moment, restores the good sword to the hand of its true owner, and enables him to overcome his adversary, who professes great remorse when he finds that he has unconsciously gone so near to slay his "soveraigne liege the king." Sir Accolon, in spite of surgions and leeches," dies of his wounds, and King Arthur sends his dead body to his false sister "for a present." Ever after he adopts, it would seem, the

* JONES'S Bardic Museum.

uncomfortable fashion of sleeping with Excalibur in his right hand naked;" in that position, at least, Morgan la Faye finds him when she makes her next attempt to rob him of it, and is obliged to content herself with carrying off the enchanted scabbard "under her mantle," and throwing it into the depths of a lake. King Arthur never sees it more.

Arthur's chief counsellor, as we have already seen, is Merlin, who in this compilation of Sir Thomas's is brought upon the stage without any kind of introduction, as a personage with whom all the literary world of that day was supposed to be already well acquainted. We may soon learn enough about him, at all events, for our present purpose. The earliest of the French metrical legends of which he is the hero forms part of Wace's Brut. Robert de Borron amplified it in French prose; and there is also an English metrical romance which bears his name. He is a wondrous child from his infancy-born, as was said, from a nun and an evil spirit, in pursuance of a design thus to counteract the great scheme of human redemption; but Nennius tells us that his father was no worse than a Roman consul. We find him, however-indeed, we find two of his name -in the fragments of bardic lays and in the Triads, at least five centuries before the Norman romance was put together. The chief traditionary features of his character, and his supernatural powers, are found in both. He is the mystical philosopher and magician of his age; a real personage, we may be almost sure, but with a history which conceals him in a cloud of fable. In the compilation before us, he presents much the same contradictory character as modern philosophers are too apt to do. He can counsel others better than himself; he has learnt every secret but that of his own weakness. "He knoweth all things," says one of the knights, by his divell's craft." One thing alone his craft is no match for. Alas! it has been a weak point with the wisest of men, before and since Merlin's day. Need it be said-even if Mr Tennyson had not made it public -that it was a woman? It is this

Nimue, or Viviane, the damosel of the lake, with whom the seer, to whom the powers of nature are subject, finds himself "so sore asotted." The symptoms were the usual ones. That "old, old story" was old even in Merlin's day. The early romancer is scarcely so merciful to him as the Laureate has been. It was not the lady's fault; he "would let her have no rest, but always he would be with her in every place." She " was passing weary of him," but was afraid of him, "because he was a divell's sonne. To rid herself of so troublesome a lover, she enticed him at last under a great stone," which a hundred men could not lift," and left him there, for ever, it would appear -"he never came out for all the craft that he could doe." Long after, Sir Bagdemagus happening to ride that way, "heard him make great moane, and would have holpen him," but Merlin "bade him leave his labour, for all was in vaine, and he might never be holpen but by her who put him there." Which allegory scarcely needs an exposition to show the hopelessness of all interference by third parties in such desperate cases. It is fair to say, however, that there is more than one version of the story. One romancer says that the fair one only did it by way of experiment-to try her power, we may conclude-and was very sorry when she found that she could not get him out again. Another account is that her object was to keep him with her always. Evidently, in some shape, we have here his story, and her story; "elle et lui"-" lui et elle." The original legend, in the fragments of it which yet remain to us in the Welsh Archæology, is certainly grander. The great magician there enters into his "floating house of crystal for the love of his lady," and disappears for ever. By this image, the expounders of bardic lore tell us, is signified death: some have held that the "floating house" of crystal is none other than Ynys-witrinethe Isle of Glass; and that Merlin's mysterious disappearance, like Arthur's, is but another image of the covering up from the profane eyes of the invader with his new creed the mystic rites of the old Druidical re

ligion in the sacred island of Glastonbury-to burst forth again into daylight, if ever the hour should come for the land to rid herself of the gods of the stranger. So certainly, whenever we look below the surface of these tales of romance, we find a region of mythology opening upon us to which nearly every clue is lost; and under the thin veil of Christianity which the AngloNorman trouveurs, most of them probably churchmen, strove to throw over them, we detect the old pagan superstitions, just as the character of sadness, which has been remarked as pervading all Celtic poetry, is ill concealed even by the lighter tonemore refined, but less moral-which they have borrowed from their reproducers in the south.

But we have somewhat anticipated the course of the main narrative, if narrative that can be called which is at best but a conglomerate of disjointed legends.

The confederate kings, who had been discontented at Arthur's accession to the throne of his reputed father, rally their forces after their first defeat, and with larger aids make war upon him afresh. They are defeated, however, by the help of King Ban and King Bors, whom Arthur has called in from " over sea." His next enemy is King Ryance of North Wales and Ireland, who sends him what Arthur fairly calls "the most villanous and lewdest message that ever man heard sent to a king." He had a taste to "purfle his mantle" with kings' beards, of which he had already obtained eleven, having overcome their owners in fair fight, and claimed this as their homage. One more was wanting to complete the pattern; and this, he had made up his mind, should be Arthur's. In reply to King Ryance's messenger, Arthur bid him observe, in the first place, that his beard was "full young yet for to make a purfell of;" secondly, with an emphasis of

which modern grammar is incapable, that for this "most shamefulest' message his master should do him homage "on both his knees," or that he, Arthur, will have of him not beard only, but the head on which it grows; a threat which two of his knights, the brothers Balin and Balan, would have accomplished for him without fail, but for King Ryance's submission. Lady C. Schreiber is undoubtedly right in her identification of this personage with the Rhitta Gawr (the giant), who appears in the Welsh legends with a similar story attached to him, and who is mentioned in the Triads as one of the three "regulators" of Britain. A hill near Towyn in Merionethshire still bears the name of Rhiw y Barfau-"Hill of the Beards"-where the giant is said to have been slain.*

But Arthur's barons "will let him have no rest" until he takes a wife. In evil hour he sets his affections on Guenever, Gwynhyfar, or Guanhumara, as Geoffrey calls her, daughter of King Leodegraunce of Camelyard. He had very little rest afterwards. This lady did her best throughout her wedded life to justify the character given her in the old Welsh distich, said to be still cur

rent

"Gwenhyfar merch Gogyrfan gawr,

Drwg yn fechan, gwaeth yn fawr." + Merlin, with a prophetic insight into the fact that she was "not wholesome for the king to take to wife, would have had him choose better; but is fain to let him have his own way, with the admission that "whereas a man's heart is set, he will be loth to return." The sole dowry, besides her fatal beauty, which Guenever brings with her, is the world-renowned Round Table. It had belonged to Uther Pendragon, and had been given by him to Leodegraunce. Merlin had made it, as we learn from the romance which bears

big."