[35] "Parlez à moi, sire au chaperon large."—C.L., l. 468.
[36] C.L., ll. 72-79, 172-196.
[37] M. Jonckbloët, who takes a less wide range, begins his selection or collection of the William saga with the Couronnement Loys.
[38] Jonckbloët, i. 73-111.
[39] Jonckbloët, i. 112-162.
[40] Enfances Vivien, ed. Wahlen and v. Feilitzer, Paris, 1886; Covenant Vivien, Jonckbloët, i. 163-213.
[41] Jonckbloët, i. 215 to end; separately, as noted above, by Guessard and de Montaignon, Paris, 1870.
[42] Foulques de Candie (ed. Tarbé, Reims, 1860) is the only one of this batch which I possess, or have read in extenso.
[43] See the quotation from Jean Bodel, [p. 26], note. The literature of the Arthurian question is very large; and besides the drawbacks referred to in the text, much of it is scattered in periodicals. The most useful recent things in English are Mr Nutt's Studies on the Legend of the Holy Grail (London, 1888); Professor Rhys's Arthurian Legend (Oxford, 1891); and the extensive introduction to Dr Sommer's Malory (London, 1890). In French the elaborate papers on different parts which M. Gaston Paris brings out at intervals in Romania cannot be neglected; and M. Loth's surveys of the subject there and in the Revue Celtique (October 1892) are valuable. Naturally, there has been a great deal in German, the best being, perhaps, Dr Kölbing's long introduction to his reprint of Arthour and Merlin (Leipzig, 1890). Other books will be mentioned in subsequent notes; but a complete and impartial history of the whole subject, giving the contents, with strictly literary criticism only, of all the texts, and merely summarising theories as to origin, &c., is still wanting, and sorely wanted. Probably there is still no better, as there is certainly no more delightful, book on the matter than M. Paulin Paris's Romans de la Table Ronde (5 vols., Paris, 1868-77). The monograph by M. Clédat on the subject in M. Petit de Julleville's new History (v. supra, [p. 23], note) is unfortunately not by any means one of the best of these studies.
[44] The late Mr Skene, with great learning and ingenuity, endeavoured in his Four Ancient Books of Wales to claim all or almost all these place-names for Scotland in the wide sense. This can hardly be admitted: but impartial students of the historical references and the romances together will observe the constant introduction of northern localities in the latter, and the express testimony in the former to the effect that Arthur was general of all the British forces. We need not rob Cornwall to pay Lothian. For the really old references in Welsh poetry see, besides Skene, Professor Rhys, op. cit. Gildas and Nennius (but not the Vita Gildæ) will be found conveniently translated, with Geoffrey himself, in a volume of Bohn's Historical Library, Six Old English Chronicles. The E.E.T.S. edition of Merlin contains a very long excursus by Mr Stuart-Glennie on the place-name question.