A History of the French Novel (Vol. 1&2). Saintsbury George
the Lady of the Lake while she caresses and talks to you? "J'en connais des plus malheureux" as the French poet observed of some one in less delectable case. The author of the Suite de Merlin seems to have been her first maligner. Tennyson, seduced by contrast, followed and exaggerated the worst view. But I am not sure that the most "irreligious" thing (as Coleridge would have said) was not the transformation of her into a mere married lady (with a château in Brittany, and an ordinary knight for her husband) which astounds us in one of the dullest parts of the Vulgate about Lancelot—the wars with Claudas.
[30] I have always thought that Spenser (whose dealings with Arthuriana are very curious, and have never, I think, been fully studied) took this function of Lancelot to suggest the presentation of his Arthur. But Lancelot has no—at least no continuous—fairy aid; he is not invariably victorious, and he is thoroughly human. Spenser's Prince began the "blamelessness" which grew more trying still in Tennyson's King. (In the few remarks of this kind made here I am not, I need hardly say, "going back upon" my lifelong estimate of Tennyson as an almost impeccable poet. But an impeccable poet is not necessarily an impeccable plot- and character-monger either in tale-telling or in drama.)
[31] Of this we have unusually strong evidence in the shape of MS. interlineations, where the name "Percevale" is actually struck out and that of "Gala[h]ad" substituted above it.
[32] I do not say that this is their only character.
[33] Brittany had much earlier and much more tradition of chivalry than Wales.
[34] The only fault alleged against Lancelot's person by carpers was that he was something "pigeon"—or "guardsman"—chested. But Guinevere showed her love and her wit, and her "valiancy" (for so at least on this occasion we may translate vaillant) by retorting that such a chest was only big enough—and hardly big enough—for such a heart.
[35] Some of the later "redactors" of the Vulgate may perhaps have unduly multiplied his madnesses, and have exaggerated his early shyness a little. But I am not sure of the latter point. It is not only "beasts" that, as in the great 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] ἑλανδρος, ἑλἑπτολις. She had no opportunity of being ἑλαναυς.
[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. "Prince" is not used in this sense by the older Romancers, but only for distinguished knights like Galahault, who is really a king.
[48] There is one admirable word here, enbarnis,> which has so long been lost to French that it is not even in Littré. But Dryden's "burnish into man" probably preserves it in English; for this is certainly not the other "burnish" from brunir.
[49] "Car moult en parole diroit la parole."
[50] Puzzled by the number of new thoughts and emotions.
[51] Ywain suggests one of the commonest things in Romance.
[52] Arthur had, by a set of chances, not actually girded on Lancelot's sword.
[53] Whose prisoner Lancelot had been, who had been ready to fall in love with him, and to whom he had expressly refused to tell his own love. Hence his confusion.
[54] The day when Lancelot, at her request, had turned against the side of his friend Galahault and brought victory to Arthur's.
[55] By the way, the Vulgate Mordred is a more subtle conception than the early stories gave, or than Malory transfers. He is no mere traitor or felon knight, much less a coward, from the first; but at that first shows a mixture of good and bad qualities in which the "dram of eale" does its usual office. Here once more is a subject made to the hand of a novelist of the first class.