or nearly a thousand years, the Arthurian legends, which lie at the basis of Tennyson's 'Idylls of the King,' have furnished unlimited literary material, not to English poets alone, but to the poets of all Christendom. These Celtic romances, having their birthplace in Brittany or in Wales, had been growing and changing for some centuries, before the fanciful 'Historia Britonum' of Geoffrey of Monmouth flushed them with color and filled them with new life. Through the version of the good Benedictine they soon became a vehicle for the dissemination of Christian doctrine. By the year 1200 they were the common property of Europe, influencing profoundly the literature of the Middle Ages, and becoming the source of a great stream of poetry that has flowed without interruption down to our own day.
Sixty years after the 'Historia Britonum' appeared, and when the English poet Layamon wrote his 'Brut' (A.D. 1205), which was a translation of Wace, as Wace was a translation of Geoffrey, the theme was engrossing the imagination of Europe. It had absorbed into itself the elements of other cycles of legend, which had grown up independently; some of these, in fact, having been at one time of much greater prominence. Finally, so vast and so complicated did the body of Arthurian legend become, that summaries of the essential features were attempted. Such a summary was made in French about 1270, by the Italian Rustighello of Pisa; in German, about two centuries later, by Ulrich Füterer; and in English by Sir Thomas Malory in his 'Morte d'Arthur,' finished "the ix. yere of the reygne of kyng Edward the Fourth," and one of the first books published in England by Caxton, "emprynted and fynysshed in th'abbey Westmestre the last day of July, the yere of our Lord MCCCCLXXXV." It is of interest to note, as an indication of the popularity of the Arthurian legends, that Caxton printed the 'Morte d'Arthur' eight years before he printed any portion of the English Bible, and fifty-three years before the complete English Bible was in print. He printed the 'Morte d'Arthur' in response to a general "demaund"; for "many noble and dyvers gentylmen of thys royame of England camen and demaunded me many and oftymes wherefore that I have not do make and enprynte the noble hystorye of the saynt greal, and of the moost renomed crysten kyng, fyrst and chyef of the thre best crysten and worthy, kyng Arthur, whyche ought moost to be remembred emonge us Englysshe men tofore al other crysten kynges."
Nor did poetic treatment of the theme then cease. Dante, in the 'Divine Comedy,' speaks by name of Arthur, Guinevere, Tristan, and Launcelot. In that touching interview in the second cycle of the Inferno between the poet and Francesca da Rimini, which Carlyle has called "a thing woven out of rainbows on a ground of eternal black," Francesca replies to Dante, who was bent to know the primal root whence her love for Paolo gat being:--
"One day
For our delight, we read of Launcelot,
How him love thralled. Alone we were, and no
Suspicion near us. Oft-times by that reading
Our eyes were drawn together, and the hue
Fled from our altered cheek. But at one point
Alone we fell. When of that smile we read,
The wished smile, rapturously kissed
By one so deep in love, then he, who ne'er
From me shall separate, at once my lips
All trembling kissed. The book and writer both
Were love's purveyors. In its leaves that day
We read no more."
This poetic material was appropriated also by the countrymen of Dante, Boiardo, Ariosto, and Tasso, by Hans Sachs in Germany, by Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton in England. As Sir Walter Scott has sung:--
"The mightiest chiefs of British song
Scorned not such legends to prolong."
Roger Ascham, it is true, has, in his 'Scholemaster' (1570 A.D.), broken a lance against this body of fiction. "In our forefathers' tyme," wrote he, "whan Papistrie, as a standyng poole, couered and ouerflowed all England, fewe bookes were read in our tong, sauyng certaine bookes of Cheualrie, as they sayd, for pastime and pleasure, which, as some say, were made in Monasteries, by idle Monkes, or wanton Chanons; as one for example, 'Morte Arthure': the whole pleasure of which booke standeth in two speciall poyntes, in open mans slaughter, and bold bawdrye: in which booke those be counted the noblest Knights, that do kill most men without any quarrell, and commit foulest aduoulteries by sutlest shiftes."
But Roger's characterization of "the whole pleasure of which booke" was not just, nor did it destroy interest in the theme. "The generall end of all the booke," said Spenser of the 'Faerie Queene,' "is to fashion a gentleman or noble person in vertuous and gentle discipline;" and for this purpose he therefore "chose the historye of King Arthure, as most fitte for the excellency of his person, being made famous by many men's former workes, and also furthest from the daunger of envie, and suspition of present tyme."
The plots for Shakespeare's 'King Lear' and 'Cymbeline' came from Geoffrey's 'Historia Britonum,' as did also the story of 'Gorboduc,' the first tragedy in the English language. Milton intended at one time that the subject of the great poem for which he was "pluming his wings" should be King Arthur, as may be seen, in his 'Mansus' and 'Epitaphium Damonis.' Indeed, he did touch the lyre upon this theme,--lightly, it is true, but firmly enough to justify Swinburne's lines:--