note.]

[Footnote 62: See above, p. 102.]

[Footnote 63: Ed. Weber, _Metrical Romances_, Edinburgh, 1810, ii.
279.]

[Footnote 64: Ed. Stengel. Tuebingen, 1873.]

[Footnote 65: Ed. Foerster. Halle, 1877.]

[Sidenote: _The legend as a whole._]

It may perhaps seem to some readers that too much praise has been
given to that romance itself. Far as we are, not merely from Ascham's
days, but from those in which the excellent Dunlop was bound to
confess that "they [the romances of the Round Table] will be found
extremely defective in those points which have been laid down as
constituting excellence in fictitious narrative," that they are
"improbable," full of "glaring anachronisms and geographical
blunders," "not well shaded and distinguished in character,"
possessing heroines such as "the mistresses of Tristan and Lancelot"
[may God assoil Dunlop!] who are "women of abandoned character,"
"highly reprehensible in their moral tendency," "equalled by the most
insipid romance of the present day as a fund of amusement." In those
days even Scott thought it prudent to limit his praise of Malory's
book to the statement that "it is written in pure old English, and
many of the wild adventures which it contains are told with a
simplicity bordering on the sublime." Of Malory--thanks to the charms
of his own book in the editions of Southey, of the two editors in
12mo, of Wright and of Sir Edward Strachey, not to mention the recent
and stately issues given by Dr Sommer and Professor Rhys--a better
idea has long prevailed, though there are some gainsayers. But of the
originals, and of the Legend as a whole, the knowledge is too much
limited to those who see in that legend only an opportunity for
discussing texts and dates, origins and national claims. Its
extraordinary beauty, and the genius which at some time or other, in
one brain or in many, developed it from the extremely meagre materials
which are all that can be certainly traced, too often escape attention
altogether, and have hardly, I think, in a single instance obtained
full recognition.

[Sidenote: _The theories of its origin._]

Yet however exaggerated the attention to the _Quellen_ may have been,
however inadequate the attention to the actual literary result, it
would be a failure in duty towards the reader, and disrespectful to
those scholars who, if not always in the most excellent way, have
contributed vastly to our knowledge of the subject, to finish this
chapt