at Theocritean place, "go timidly because they fear
Cythera"; and a love charged with such dread consequences was not to be
lightly embarked upon.

[36] The early _Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere_, though only external,
is perfect. Many touches in the _Idylls_ other than the title-one are
suitable and even subtle; but the convertite in that one is (as they say
now) "unconvincing." The simpler attitude of the rejection of Lancelot
in the verse _Morte_ and in Malory is infinitely better. As for Morris's
two pieces, they could hardly be better in themselves as poems--but they
are scarcely great on the novel side.

[37] Disagreeable, that is to say, as a sister and sister-in-law. There
must have been something attractive about her in other relations.

[38] Compare one of the not so very many real examples of Ibsen's
vaunted psychology, the placid indifference to her own past of Gina in
the _Wild Duck_.

[39] He had said that if he were a woman he would give Lancelot anything
he asked; and the Queen, following, observes that Gawain had left
nothing for a woman to say.

[40] _Nos passions ont quelque chose d'infini_, says Bossuet.

[41] [Greek: helandros, heleptolis]. She had no opportunity of being
[Greek: helenaus].

[42] Hawker's security as to Cornish men and things is, I admit, a
little Bardolphian. But did he not write about the Quest? (This sort of
argument simply swarms in Arthurian controversy; so I may surely use it
once.) Besides there is no doubt about the blueness of the sea in
question; though Anthony Trollope, in _Malachi's Cove_, has most falsely
and incomprehensibly denied it.

[43] That this is a real sign of decadence and unoriginality, the
further exaggeration of it in the case of the knights of the _Amadis_
cycle proves almost to demonstration.

[44] After the opening sentence I have dropped the historic present,
which, for a continuance, is very irritating in English.

[45] Lancelot himself has told us earlier (_op. cit._ i. 38) that,
though he neither knew nor thought himself to be a king's son, he was
commonly addressed as such.

[46] Lionel (very young at the time) had wept because some one mentioned
the loss of his inheritance, and Lancelot (young as he too was) had
bidden him not cry for fear of landlessness. "There would be plenty for
him, if he had heart to gain it."

[47] This technical title is usually if not invariably given to Ywain
and Gawain as eldest sons of recognised kings