of the Arthurian Legend, is equally
alien from her character. We see Iseult planning the murder of
Brengwain with equal savagery and ingratitude, and we feel that it is
no libel. On the other hand, though Tristram's faithfulness is
proverbial, it is an entirely different kind of faithfulness from that
of Lancelot--flightier, more passionate perhaps in a way, but of a
less steady passion. Lancelot would never have married Iseult the
White-handed.

[Footnote 55: It is fair to say that Mark, like Gawain, appears to
have gone through a certain process of blackening at the hands of the
late romancers; but the earliest story invited this.]

It is, however, quite easy to understand how, this Tristram legend
existing by hypothesis already or being created at the same time, the
curious centripetal and agglutinative tendency of mediaeval romance
should have brought it into connection with that of Arthur. The mere
fact of Mark's being a vassal-king of Greater Britain would have been
reason enough; but the parallel between the prowess of Lancelot and
Tristram, and between their loves for the two queens, was altogether
too tempting to be resisted. So Tristram makes his appearance in
Arthur's court, and as a knight of the Round Table, but as not exactly
at home there,--as a visitor, an "honorary member" rather than
otherwise, and only an occasional partaker of the home tournaments and
the adventures abroad which occupy Arthur's knights proper.

[Sidenote: _Sir Lancelot._]

The origin of the greatest of these, of Lancelot himself, is less
distinct. Since the audacious imaginativeness of the late M. de la
Villemarque, which once, I am told, brought upon him the epithet
"_Faussaire!_" uttered in full conclave of Breton antiquaries, has
ceased to be taken seriously by Arthurian students, the old fancies
about some Breton "Ancel" or "Ancelot" have been quietly dropped. But
the Celticisers still cling fondly to the supposed possibility of
derivation from King Melvas, or King Maelgon, one or other of whom
does seem to have been connected, as above mentioned, by early Welsh
tradition with the abduction of the queen. It is, however, evident to
any reader of the _Charette_ episode, whether in the original French
prose and verse or in Malory, that Meleagraunce the ravisher and
Lancelot the avenger cannot have the same original. I should myself
suppose Lancelot to have been a directly and naturally spontaneous
literary growth. The necessity