its curious mediaeval guise, attested the potent
spell of antique legend.[1] The two other great cycles were of later
origin, and centred around the commanding historical figures of
Charlemagne, and the phantom glory of the legendary Arthur.

[1]The extraordinary interest in the half legendary career of Alexander
the Great must be noticed here, as also the profound respect amounting to
veneration for the Roman poet, Vergil.

The origin of the Arthurian story is involved in obscurity. The crudest
form of the myth has doubtless a core of historic truth, and represents
him as a mighty Celtic warrior, who works havoc among the heathen Saxon
invaders. Accretions naturally are added, and a miraculous origin and a
mysterious death throw a superstitious halo around the hero. When the
brilliant personality of Lancelot breaks into the tale, and the legend of
the Holy Grail is superadded, the theme exercised an irresistible
fascination upon the imagination of mediaeval Europe.

The vicissitudes of the Celtic inhabitants of Britain are as romantic as
any of which history holds record. After the departure of the Roman
invaders from the island, the native population swiftly reasserted
itself. The Picts of Caledonia and the Scots of Ireland were their
natural foes, but conflict with these enemies served only to stimulate
the national life. But actual disaster threatened them when in the fifth
and sixth centuries the heathen Angles and Saxons bore down in
devastating hordes upon the land. It is at this critical period in the
national history that Arthur must have lived. How long or how valiant
the resistance was we cannot know. That it was vain is certain. A large
body of Britons fled from annihilation across the channel, and founded in
the region of Armurica in France, a new Brittany. Meanwhile, in the
older Britain, the foe pressed hard upon their fellow-countrymen, and
drove them into the western limits of the island, into the fastnesses of
Wales, and the rocky parts of Cornwall. Here, and in Northern France,
proud in their defeat and tenacious of the instincts of their race, they
lived and still live, in the imaginative memories of the past. For them
the future held little store of earthly gain, and yet they made the whole
world their debtor.

Even in the courts of the conqueror Saxon their strange and beautiful
poetry won favour, and in a later century the Norman kings and barons
welcomed eagerly the wandering mi