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Milton was meditating an Arthurian epic in 1639; and in our own day the interest of the legends about King Arthur and his knights has been revived by Tennyson's "Idylls of the King" and some of Wagner's operas.

To call it a translation is almost to give it a misnomer, for although Wace follows exactly the order and substance of the Historia, he was more than a mere translator, and was too much of a poet not to impress his own individuality upon his work. He makes some few additions to Geoffrey's Arthurian history, but his real contribution to the legend is the new spirit that he put into it.

As we are already on the threshold of legend and myth, we may linger there a moment to recall to memory the resemblance between the description of this piece of handiwork and that ascribed to good King Arthur, who lived in days when monarchs were their own chefs, for the Arthurian dish was also prepared in a bag, and consisted, according to the ditty, of barley-meal and fat.

It is therefore conceivable that a Welsh 'litterateur, familiar as he must have been with the Llywarch, and as he quite possibly was with the Oisin, instance, should cast his version of the Arthurian stories in a similar form, and that the facts noted by you and Singer may be thus explained."

But, as if in compensation of the usurpation of which they had been the victims, the Carolingian tales, pushed out of the way by the Arthurian cycle, were not destined to perish.

The most distinctive poems the most permanently rooted and with heartiest reason for being the copious cycle of Arthurian legends, or the almost equally copious Charlemagne cycle, or the poems of the Cid, or Scandinavian Eddas, or Nibelungen, or Chaucer, or Spenser, or bona fide Ossian, or Inferno probably had their rise in the great historic perturbations, which they came in to sum up and confirm, indirectly embodying results to date.

It has been said, I do not know on what authority, that the poet had no recollection of composing Sir Galahad, any more than Scott remembered composing The Bride of Lammermoor, or Thackeray parts of Pendennis. The haunting of Tennyson's mind by the Arthurian legends prompted also the lovely fragment on the Queen's last Maying, Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere, a thing of perfect charm and music.

"Floriant and Florete" is another Arthurian tale, while "Aucassin and Nicolette," of unknown authorship, is a charming romance of love in Southern France and captivity among the Saracens. The life of the Troubadour forms a pleasing picture in the book of mediæval history.

In so marvellous a treasure of precious things as the volumes of 1842, perhaps none is more splendid, perfect, and perdurable than the Morte d'Arthur. It had been written seven years earlier, and pronounced by the poet "not bad." Tennyson was never, perhaps, a very deep Arthurian student. A little cheap copy of Malory was his companion.

Those adventures of particular heroes have sometimes a sort of Arthurian link, but they really have no more to do with the main Arthurian story than if Arthur were not. For the present purpose, however, filiation, origin, and such-like things are of much less importance than the actual stories that get themselves told to satisfy that demand which in due time is to produce the supply of the novel.