There was, however, no such artistic constraint as regards episodes of the main story, or romans d'aventures celebrating the exploits of single knights, and connected with that story by a sort of stock overture and dénoûment, in the first of which an adventure is usually started at Arthur's court, while the successful knight is also accustomed to send his captives to give testimony to his prowess in the same place. As has been said above,[61] there is a whole cluster of such episodes—most, it would seem, owing their origin to England or Scotland—which have Sir Gawain for their chief hero, and which, at least in such forms as survive, would appear to be later than the great central romances which have been just noticed. Some of these are of much local interest—there being a Scottish group, a group which seems to centre about Cumbria, and so forth—but they fall rather to the portion of my successor in this series, who will take as his province Gawaine and the Green Knight, Lancelot of the Laik, the quaint alliterative Thornton Morte Arthur, and not a few others. The most interesting of all is that hitherto untraced romance of Beaumains or Gareth (he, as Gawain's brother, brings the thing into the class referred to), of which Malory has made an entire book, and which is one of the most completely and perfectly turned-out episodes existing. It has points in common with Yvain,[62] and others in common with Ipomydon,[63] but at the same time quite enough of its own. But we have no French text for it. On the other hand, we have long verse romances like Durmart le Gallois[64] (which both from the title and from certain mystical Graal passages rather connects itself with the Percevale sub-section); and the Chevalier as Deux Espées,[65] which belongs to the Gawain class. But all these, as well as the German romances to be noticed in [chap. vi.], distinguish themselves from the main stories analysed above not merely by their obvious and almost avowed dependence, but by a family likeness in incident, turn, and phrase from which those main stories are free. In fact the general fault of the Romans d'Aventures is that neither the unsophisticated freshness of the chanson de geste, nor the variety and commanding breadth of the Arthurian legend, appears in them to the full. The kind of "balaam," the stock repetitions and expletives at which Chaucer laughs in "Sir Thopas"—a laugh which has been rather unjustly received as condemning the whole class of English romances—is very evident even in the French texts. We have left the great and gracious ways, the inspiring central ideas, of the larger romance.
The legend as a whole.
It may perhaps seem to some readers that too much praise has been given to that romance itself. Far as we are, not merely from Ascham's days, but from those in which the excellent Dunlop was bound to confess that "they [the romances of the Round Table] will be found extremely defective in those points which have been laid down as constituting excellence in fictitious narrative," that they are "improbable," full of "glaring anachronisms and geographical blunders," "not well shaded and distinguished in character," possessing heroines such as "the mistresses of Tristan and Lancelot" [may God assoil Dunlop!] who are "women of abandoned character," "highly reprehensible in their moral tendency," "equalled by the most insipid romance of the present day as a fund of amusement." In those days even Scott thought it prudent to limit his praise of Malory's book to the statement that "it is written in pure old English, and many of the wild adventures which it contains are told with a simplicity bordering on the sublime." Of Malory—thanks to the charms of his own book in the editions of Southey, of the two editors in 12mo, of Wright and of Sir Edward Strachey, not to mention the recent and stately issues given by Dr Sommer and Professor Rhys—a better idea has long prevailed, though there are some gainsayers. But of the originals, and of the Legend as a whole, the knowledge is too much limited to those who see in that legend only an opportunity for discussing texts and dates, origins and national claims. Its extraordinary beauty, and the genius which at some time or other, in one brain or in many, developed it from the extremely meagre materials which are all that can be certainly traced, too often escape attention altogether, and have hardly, I think, in a single instance obtained full recognition.
The theories of its origin.
Yet however exaggerated the attention to the Quellen may have been, however inadequate the attention to the actual literary result, it would be a failure in duty towards the reader, and disrespectful to those scholars who, if not always in the most excellent way, have contributed vastly to our knowledge of the subject, to finish this chapter without giving something on the question of origins itself. I shall therefore conclude it with a brief sketch of the chief opinions on the subject, and with an indication of those to which many years' reading have inclined myself.
The theories, not to give them one by one as set forth by individual writers, are in the main as follows:—
Celtic.
I. That the Legend is, not merely in its first inception, but in main bulk, Celtic, either (a) Welsh or (b) Armorican.
French.
II. That it is, except in the mere names and the vaguest outline, French.