The origin of the greatest of these, of Lancelot himself, is less distinct. Since the audacious imaginativeness of the late M. de la Villemarqué, which once, I am told, brought upon him the epithet "Faussaire!" uttered in full conclave of Breton antiquaries, has ceased to be taken seriously by Arthurian students, the old fancies about some Breton "Ancel" or "Ancelot" have been quietly dropped. But the Celticisers still cling fondly to the supposed possibility of derivation from King Melvas, or King Maelgon, one or other of whom does seem to have been connected, as above mentioned, by early Welsh tradition with the abduction of the queen. It is, however, evident to any reader of the Charette episode, whether in the original French prose and verse or in Malory, that Meleagraunce the ravisher and Lancelot the avenger cannot have the same original. I should myself suppose Lancelot to have been a directly and naturally spontaneous literary growth. The necessity of a love-interest for the Arthurian story being felt, and, according to the manner of the time, it being felt with equal strength that the lover must not be the husband, it was needful to look about for some one else. The merely business-like self-surrender to Mordred as the king de facto, to the "lips that were near," of Geoffrey's Guanhumara and Layamon's Wenhaver, was out of the question; and the part of Gawain as a faithful nephew was too well settled already by tradition for it to be possible to make him the lover. Perhaps the great artistic stroke in the whole Legend, and one of the greatest in all literature, is the concoction of a hero who should be not only
"Like Paris handsome, and like Hector brave,"
but more heroic than Paris and more interesting than Hector,—not only a "greatest knight," but at once the sinful lover of his queen and the champion who should himself all but achieve, and in the person of his son actually achieve, the sacred adventure of the Holy Graal. If, as there seems no valid reason to disbelieve, the hitting upon this idea, and the invention or adoption of Lancelot to carry it out, be the work of Walter Mapes, then Walter Mapes is one of the great novelists of the word, and one of the greatest of them. If it was some unknown person (it could hardly be Chrestien, for in Chrestien's form the Graal interest belongs to Percevale, not to Lancelot or Galahad), then the same compliment must be paid to that person unknown. Meanwhile the conception and execution of Lancelot, to whomsoever they may be due, are things most happy. Entirely free from the faultlessness which is the curse of the classical hero; his unequalled valour not seldom rewarded only by reverses; his merits redeemed from mawkishness by his one great fault, yet including all virtues that are themselves most amiable, and deformed by no vice that is actually loathsome; the soul of goodness in him always warring with his human frailty;—Sir Lancelot fully deserves the noble funeral eulogy pronounced over his grave, and felt by all the elect to be, in both senses, one of the first of all extant pieces of perfect English prose.
The minor knights.
But the virtues which are found in Lancelot eminently are found in all but the "felon" knights, differing only in degree. It is true that the later romances and compilations, feeling perhaps the necessity of shade, extend to all the sons of Lot and Margause, except Gareth, and to some extent Gawain, the unamiable character which Mordred enjoys throughout, and which even in the Merlin is found showing itself in Agravaine. But Sir Lamoracke, their victim, is almost Lancelot's equal: and the best of Lancelot's kin, especially Sir Bors, come not far behind. It is entirely untrue that, as the easy epigram has it, they all "hate their neighbour and love their neighbour's wife." On the contrary, except in the bad subjects—ranging from the mere ruffianism of Breuse-sans-Pitié to the misconduct of Meleagraunce—there is no hatred of your neighbour anywhere. It is not hatred of your neighbour to be prepared to take and give hard blows from and to him, and to forgather in faith and friendship before and after. And as to the other and more delicate point, a large majority of the knights can at worst claim the benefit of the law laid down by a very pious but indulgent mediæval writer,[56] who says that if men will only not meddle with "spouse or sib" (married women or connections within the prohibited degrees), it need be no such deadly matter.
Arthur.
It may be desirable, as it was in reference to Charlemagne, to say a few words as to Arthur himself. In both cases there is noticeable (though less in the case of Arthur than in that of Charlemagne) the tendency not to make the king blameless, or a paragon of prowess: and in both cases, as we should expect, this tendency is even more noticeable in the later versions than in the earlier. This may have been partly due to the aristocratic spirit of at least idealised feudalism, which gave the king no semi-divine character, but merely a human primacy inter pares; partly also to the literary instinct of the Middle Ages, which had discovered that the "biggest" personage of a story is by no means that one who is most interesting. In Arthur's very first literary appearance, the Nennius passage, his personal prowess is specially dwelt upon: and in those parts of the Merlin group which probably represent the first step from Geoffrey to the complete legend, he slays Saxons and Romans, wrests the sword single-handed from King Ryaunce, and so forth, as valiantly as Gawain himself. It is, however, curious that at this time the writers are much less careful than at a later to represent him as faithful to Guinevere, and blameless before marriage, with the exception of the early affair with Margause. He accepts the false Guinevere and the Saxon enchantress very readily; and there is other scandal in which the complaisant Merlin as usual figures. But in the accepted Arthuriad (I do not of course speak of modern writers) this is rather kept in the background, while his prowess is also less prominent, except in a few cases, such as his great fight with his sister's lover, Sir Accolon. Even here he never becomes the complaisant wittol, which late and rather ignoble works like the Cokwold's Daunce[57] represent him as being: and he never exhibits the slightest approach to the outbursts of almost imbecile wrath which characterise Charlemagne.
Guinevere.
Something has been said of Guinevere already. It is perhaps hard to look, as any English reader of our time must, backward through the coloured window of the greatest of the Idylls of the King without our thoughts of the queen being somewhat affected by it. But those who knew their Malory before the Idylls appeared escape that danger. Mr Morris's Guinevere in her Defence is perhaps a little truer than Lord Tennyson's to the original conception—indeed, much of the delightful volume in which she first appeared is pure Extrait Arthurien. But the Tennysonian glosses on Guinevere's character are not ill justified: though perhaps, if less magnificent, it would have been truer, both to the story and to human nature, to attribute her fall rather to the knowledge that Arthur himself was by no means immaculate than to a despairing sense of his immaculateness. The Guinevere of the original romances is the first perfectly human woman in English literature. They have ennobled her unfaithfulness to Arthur by her constancy to Lancelot, they have saved her constancy to Lancelot from being insipid by interspersing the gusts of jealousy in the matter of the two Elaines which play so great a part in the story. And it is curious that, coarse as both the manners and the speech of the Middle Ages are supposed to have been, the majority of these romances are curiously free from coarseness. The ideas might shock Ascham's prudery, but the expression is, with the rarest exceptions, scrupulously adapted to polite society. There are one or two coarse passages in the Merlin and the older Saint Graal, and I remember others in outside branches like the Chevalier as Deux Espées. But though a French critic has detected something shocking in Le Chevalier à la Charette, it requires curious consideration to follow him.
The Graal.