Y ALMOST CERTAINLY CELTIC.
SIR LANCELOT. THE MINOR KNIGHTS. ARTHUR. GUINEVERE. THE
GRAAL. HOW IT PERFECTS THE STORY. NATURE OF THIS PERFECTION.
NO SEQUEL POSSIBLE. LATIN EPISODES. THE LEGEND AS A WHOLE.
THE THEORIES OF ITS ORIGIN. CELTIC. FRENCH. ENGLISH.
LITERARY. THE CELTIC THEORY. THE FRENCH CLAIMS. THE THEORY
OF GENERAL LITERARY GROWTH. THE ENGLISH OR ANGLO-NORMAN
PRETENSIONS. ATTEMPTED HYPOTHESIS.

[Sidenote: _Attractions of the Arthurian Legend._]

To English readers, and perhaps not to English readers only, the
middle division of the three great romance-subjects[43] ought to be of
far higher interest than the others; and that not merely, even in the
English case, for reasons of local patriotism. The mediaeval versions
of classical story, though attractive to the highest degree as
evidence of the extraordinary plastic power of the period, which could
transform all art to its own image and guise, and though not destitute
of individual charm here and there, must always be mainly curiosities.
The cycle of Charlemagne, a genuine growth and not merely an
incrustation or transformation, illustrated, moreover, by particular
examples of the highest merit, is exposed on the one hand to the
charge of a certain monotony, and on the other to the objection that,
beautiful as it is, it is dead. For centuries, except in a few
deliberate literary exercises, the king _a la barbe florie_ has
inspired no modern singer--his _geste_ is extinct. But the Legend of
Arthur, the latest to take definite form of the three, has shown by
far the greatest vitality. From generation to generation it has taken
new forms, inspired new poetries. The very latest of the centuries has
been the most prolific in contributions of any since the end of the
Middle Ages; and there is no sufficient reason why the lineage should
ever stop. For while the romance of antiquity is a mere "sport," an
accident of time and circumstance, the _chanson de geste_, majestic
and interesting as it is, representative as it is to a certain extent
of a nation and a language, has the capital defect of not being
adaptable. Having little or no allegorical capacity, little "soul," so
to speak, it was left by the tide of time on the shores thereof
without much hope of floating and living again. The Arthurian Legend,
if not from the very first, yet from the first moment when it assumed
vernacular forms, lent itself to that double meaning which,