The spurious Arthur is the work of Jeffry of Monmouth, in his lying chronicle, where, under the pretext of historical fact, the prince of a small district and barbarous tribe of South Britain is made the king of the whole land, conqueror of the Saxons, invader of Europe, and adversary of Rome. He drives foreign enemies from the island and makes them tributary, adds to his kingdom Ireland, Iceland, and the Orkneys, subdues Norway and Gaul, takes Paris, and is crossing the Alps, on his way to the Imperial City, when the news of his nephew's revolt reaches him, and he returns home to be killed in Cornwall and buried in Avalon.

But the real Arthur is the Arthur of romance. More real he than the actual historic king. For what the mind imagines has often more reality for it than what it believes. What it forms in itself is apt to be more to it than what is proved from outside. It holds closer intimacy and nearer relation with its own creations than with the supplies of the senses or the guests of the understanding. It draws a magic circle, where the finer intellect realizes things which the grosser part may not apprehend. In this charmed region Fancy revels in those

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lucent syrops tinct with cinnamon,

And spiced dainties, every one,

From silken Samarcand to cedared Lebanon,"

which are always more fresh and delicious than the coarse flavors of common life to the taste; and here those

"violets, dim,

But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes

Or Cytherea's breath,"

woo us with a perfume above the fragrance of mortal gardens. Here, too, Imagination, that master faculty of the soul, brings us into such close relation with some grand play or stress of human power and passion, that Cordelia and Hamlet, Beatrice and Faust, become henceforth more real to the mind than our nearest neighbors and companions.

As with the individual, so with nations, this power of making things that are not as if they were, stores mind and heart with persons, scenes, and events of its fashioning, whose reality, for pleasure and for good use too, experience may not

match in its own kind. The men and deeds of national legend and of ethnic myths come home to the wits, affections, humors, of the people. It is a blood-relationship; they are never alien, but always welcome in their old and natural haunts. It is with reason that a nation's ballads have been put, for living influence over social and civic life, above its laws. And it is in ballads, Volkslieder, and fables, songs of minstrelsy and the annals of story-tellers, that the life and fame of the real Arthur are set forth. They are the royal archives from whose records his chivalric glory and goodness draw the popular interest and liking, throughout a boundless realm of pleasant imaginings and day-dreams. Here, among the mind's marvels and the heart's delights, he holds a sovereignty beside which the remote and dim state of that petty British chief makes no show. The prophecy of his epitaph is fulfilled,— "Rex quondam, rexque futurus," "Once king, and king to be;" for here he continually rules in the full splendor of his court and bravery of his Round Table, a real presence to all children of Saxon and British stock, and to as many of their elders as are fortunate or wise enough to retain still something of the child in their hearts, and to carry along with them a little of that happy credulity which, in the nursery, heard with favor,

"When as King Arthur ruled the land,
He was a goodly king,"

and which, cultured to a more delicate fancy, enables them to read with delight these new Idyls, where his goodliness and gracious times are so fairly set forth. Here he is always "Flos Regum," the Flower of Kings, in comparison with whose splendid bloom many historic potentates are but "kings of shreds and patches."

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With this real Arthur the books at the head of this article have to do. Jeffry of Monmouth may be supposed to have gathered up in A. D. 1147, after his tedious way, and with feeble romancing of his own, a good deal of the floating story which for six centuries had been collecting around the name of the historic Arthur, and with fond exaggeration perpetuating the fame of his patriotism. This foolish chronicle of his

seems, however, to have done much good in this, that it set the fancy of singers and story-tellers to work. For shortly after his time many romances appear, written, for the most part, in the Anglo-Norman dialect, telling the tale of the "Queste du St. Graal," "Lancelot du Lac," and the "Morte d'Arthure," with the life and deeds of Merlin the enchanter, and of many knights and dames like Tristan and Galahad, Isoude and Guinevere. These romances, and a mass of legendary verse and prose on the same theme of Arthur and his chivalry, furnish to one Sir Thomas Malory, in 1470, material for the compilation of a book "oute of certeyne bookes of Frensshe and reduced into Englysshe," which William Caxton, in 1485, printed in the Abbey of Westminster, with the title "La Mort Darthur." Of this book many reprints have been made, the most famous of which is the elegant quarto edited by Southey. Beside these, certain translations of it into modern and readable English have appeared. Of these, the edition of 1634 furnishes Mr. Thomas Wright the basis of his handsome book, published last year in that “Library of Old Authors" in which the London publisher, Smith, has given us old Chapman's Homer, and many ancient books of worth, in a shape which fitly renews something of the quaintness of the original imprint.

This "La Morte d'Arthure" is the treasury of information concerning the king, his brave knights and lovely ladies, feasts, tourneys, wars, enchantments, and all the brilliant haps and sad mishaps of his life, court, and renowned Round Table. It is from this source that book-makers, story-writers, fabliasts, balladists, and poets have drawn their stories of Sir Tristram and his devotion to La Beale Isoude, and how Sir Lancelot and the queen joined their guilty loves, of the young and pure knight, Sir Galahad, who was blessed with the sacrament from the holy chalice of the very blood shed by the Lord upon the cross, and how the Lady of Shalott died for love of Lancelot, and crafty Viviane shut up Merlin for herself, with many other fables of strange adventure and magical fortune, fit to lead and please the fancy.

Yet it does not merely feed the childish appetite for marvels, but answers the more mature wish, which exacts of fic

tion that it should, even under the unsettled conditions of romance, keep something of the interest of that conflict which goes on by the mingled good and evil in men's hearts and fates. It is not Fancy run wild, but, with all her lawless magician-work and fairy extravagance, bound still to deal with and present, "after what flourish her nature will," some memorial of that strife of human affections, powers, and destinies, in which are born equally the prose and commonplace with the poetry and heroism of life. "Herein," says Caxton, in the Prologue to his edition, "may be seen noble chyvalrye, curtosye, humanyte, frendlynesse, hardynesse, love, frendshyp, cowardyse, murdre, hate, vertue, synne." So much semblance of the unfanciful truth of things and enforcement from actual humanity these fanciful stories of elfdom have, to give real pleasure and profit, and to bear out the pious conclusion of the Preface: "But al is wryton for our doctryne, and for to beware that we falle not to vyse ne synne, but texercyse and folowe vertu, by whyche we may come and atteyne to good fame and renomme in thys lyf, and after thys shorte and transytorye lyf to come into everlastyng blysse in heven, the whyche he graunt us that reygneth in heven the blessed Trynyte. Amen."

From "La Morte d'Arthure" Mr. Bulfinch has largely drawn for his excellent "Age of Chivalry," which does for this portion of modern romance what "The Age of Fable" did so well for the old mythology. The same refinement of taste and simplicity of style which marked the former book distinguish this. It contains the best and most characteristic stories of Arthur and his knights, cleared of what is tedious and exceptionable. Perhaps the book can have no better praise than that it is sure of its place in the children's libraries, on the same shelf, and in the same attractive dog-eared and shabby condition with the much beread and belent Arabian Nights and Child's Own Book. But it will not lack the more discriminating favor of those who judge it by its literary merit. Its introductory information upon the manners and customs of chivalry, the original sources of the legends, and the mythic history of England, is valuable, and the stories selected are among the most remarkable and interesting. They will be

esteemed for themselves and the genial pleasure they give, apart from the value which attaches to them for the suggestion they have given to poets like Bulwer and Tennyson.

The second part of "The Age of Chivalry" is chosen out of the Mabinogeon, a rather ill-sounding Welsh word, which means Prose Tales, and is the title of a collection of Welsh legends, among which are many Round-Table stories. These, in manuscript, were known for years to be buried in various libraries, and were at last brought to light and printed by a patriotic Mr. Owen, to be now given to English comprehension in a translation by Lady Guest. They have an interest equal with, and rather fresher, than the fables of the Morte d'Arthure, and readers will gladly make the confession which the American compiler hopes, "that he has laid them under no light obligation." Among them it is pleasant to find the original of the first of the Idyls of the King, “Enid.” These Mabinogeon have a more popular flavor than those from the History of Arthur and his Round Table, which came to the English through chansons, romances, and fabliaux in the Anglo-Norman tongue. They are less for knights and more for the people; not minstrel songs so much as fireside stories. They have about them the cast of common life and ungentle manners, as well as of the splendor of chivalry and the bearing of nobles. There is a good deal of direct narration, sharp speech, and sturdy talk, with broad humor and practical joking, which smack of the people and their likings, and which appear so notably in ballads. In this fashion of the crowd, and in certain other respects, one is struck with a resemblance between these Welsh stories and the Oriental,those of the Thousand and One Nights, for example. In both are the same brisk talk and pointed reply, and a like cumulative exaggeration in description. This, for instance, seems much after the Oriental fashion, where Kay tells the giant's porter that he will know Bedwyr by the lance whose "head will leave the shaft and draw blood from the wind, and descend upon the shaft again;" and where the maiden Olwen is described: "More yellow was her head .than the flower of the broom, and her skin was whiter than the foam of the wave, and fairer her hands and her fingers than the blossoms