regards the mystery of his final disappearance rather
than death, they had little if anything to do with the received
Arthurian story. On the other hand, as far as Brittany was concerned,
after a period of confident assertion, and of attempts, in at least
doubtful honesty, to supply what could not be found, it had to be
acknowledged that Brittany could supply no ancient texts whatever, and
hardly any ancient tradition. These facts, when once established (and
they have never since been denied by competent criticism), staggered
the Celtic claim very seriously. Of late years, however, it has found
advocates (who, as usual, adopt arguments rather mutually destructive
than mutually confirmatory) both in France (M. Gaston Paris) and in
Germany (Herr Zimmer), while it has been passionately defended in
England by Mr Nutt, and with a more cautious, but perhaps at least
equally firm, support by Professor Rhys. As has been said, these
Neo-Celticists do not, when they are wise, attempt to revive the older
form of the claims. They rest theirs on the scattered references in
undoubtedly old Welsh literature above referred to, on the place-names
which play such an undoubtedly remarkable part in the local
nomenclature of the West-Welsh border in the south-west of England and
in Cornwall, of Wales less frequently, of Strathclyde and Lothian
eminently, and not at all, or hardly at all, of that portion of
England which was early and thoroughly subjected to Saxon and Angle
sway. And the bolder of them, taking advantage of the admitted
superiority in age of Irish to Welsh literature as far as texts go,
have had recourse to this, not for direct originals (it is admitted
that there are none, even of parts of the Legend such as those
relating to Tristram and Iseult, which are not only avowedly Irish in
place but Irish in tone), but for evidences of differential origin in
comparison with classical and Teutonic literature. Unfortunately this
last point is one not of technical "scholarship," but of general
literary criticism, and it is certain that the Celticists have not
converted all or most students in that subject to their view. I should
myself give my opinion, for whatever it may be worth, to the effect
that the tone and tendency of the Celtic, and especially the Irish,
literature of very early days, as declared by its own modern
champions, are quite different from those of the romances in general
and the Arthurian Legend in particular. Again,