there,
His lips have made august the fabulous air,
His hands have touched and left the wild weeds fair."

But his duties as Latin Secretary to the Commonwealth diverted him from
poetry for many years, and when the Restoration gave him leisure once
more to court the Muse, he had come to doubt the existence of the Celtic
hero-king; for in 'Paradise Lost' (Book i., line 579) he refers to

"what resounds
In fable or romance of Uther's son;"

and in his 'History of Britain' (1670 A.D.) he says explicitly:--"For
who Arthur was, and whether ever any such reign'd in Britan, hath bin
doubted heertofore, and may again with good reason."

Dryden, who composed the words of an opera on King Arthur, meditated,
according to Sir Walter Scott, a larger treatment of the theme:--

"And Dryden in immortal strain
Had raised the Table Round again,
But that a ribald King and Court
Bade him toil on to make them sport."

Sir Walter himself edited the old metrical romance of 'Sir Tristram,'
and where the manuscript was defective, composed a portion after the
manner of the original, the portion in which occur the lines,

"Mi schip do thou take,
With godes that bethe new;
Two seyles do thou make,
Beth different in hewe:

* * * * *

"Ysoude of Britanye,
With the white honde,
The schip she can se,
Seyling to londe;
The white seyl tho marked sche.

* * * * *

"Fairer ladye ere
Did Britannye never spye,
Swiche murning chere,
Making on heighe;
On Tristremes bere,
Doun con she lye;
Rise ogayn did sche nere,
But thare con sche dye
For woe;
Swiche lovers als thei
Never schal be moe."

Of the poets of the present generation, Tennyson has treated the
Arthurian poetic heritage as a whole. Phases of the Arthurian theme have
been presented also by his contemporaries and successors at home and
abroad,--by William Wordsworth, Lord Lytton, Robert Stephen Hawker,
Matthew Arnold, William Morris, Algernon Charles Swinburne, in England;
Edgar Quinet in France; Wilhelm Hertz, L. Schneegans, F. Roeber, in
Germany; Richard Hovey in America. There have been many other approved
variations on Arthurian themes, such as James Russell Lowell's 'Vision
of Sir Launfal,' and Richard Wagner's operas, 'Lohengrin