phrase for what
would have been a vulgar thing) with Mordred,[55] either for himself or
for the kingdom that he was trying to steal. And I am bound to say again
that much as I have read of purely French romance--that is to say,
French not merely in language but in certain origin--I know nothing and
nobody like her in it.

That Guinevere, like Charlotte, was "a married lady," that, unlike
Charlotte, she forgot the fact, and that Lancelot, though somewhat
Wertheresque in some of his features, was not quite so "moral" as that
very dull young man, are facts which I wish neither to suppress nor to
dwell upon. We may cry "Agreed" here to the indictment, and all its
consequences. They are not the question.

The question is the suggesting of novel-romance elements which forms the
aesthetic solace of this ethical sin. It should be seen at once that the
Guinevere of the Vulgate, and her fault or fate, provide a character and
career of no small complexity. It has been already said that to
represent her as after a fashion intercepted by love for Lancelot on her
way to Arthur, like Iseult of Ireland or Margaret of Anjou, is, so to
speak, as unhistorical as it is insufficiently artistic. We cannot,
indeed, borrow Diderot's speech to Rousseau and say, "C'est le pont aux
anes," but it certainly would not have been the way of the Walter whom I
favour, though I think it might have been the way of the Chrestien that
I know. Guinevere, when she meets her lover, rescuer, and doomsman, is
no longer a girl, and Lancelot is almost a boy. It is not, in the common
and cheap misuse of the term, the most "romantic" arrangement, but some
not imperfect in love-lore have held that a woman's love is never so
strong as when she is past girlhood and well approaching age, and that
man's is never stronger than when he is just not a boy. Lancelot himself
has loved no woman (except his quasi-mother, the Lady of the Lake), and
will love none after he has fulfilled the Dead Shepherd's "saw of
might." She _has_ loved; dispute this and you not only cancel gracious
scenes of the text, but spoil the story; but she has, though probably
she does not yet know it, ceased to love,[56] and not without some
reason. To say no more about Arthur's technical "blamelessness," he has,
by the coming of Lancelot, ceased to be altogether heroic. Though never
a mere petulant and ferocious dotard as the _Chansons_ too often
represent Charlemagne, he is very far from being a wise