Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/45

Rh romance ; and that if Map was not the author of the con ception, as seems highly probable, he first, by writing the French romances of the Saint Graal, the second part of Lancelot, and Mort Artur, invested it in literary form. These theories cannot be discussed here ; but it may be remarked that, in order to pave the way for any rational theory, it is indispensable to have a clear view of the con dition of romance literature at and before the time when the conception arose. The legend of Arthur, which barely rises to the surface in the narrative of Giklas, had in the time of Nennius (9th century) attained to considerable consistency, and through the appearance of the Historia Britonum of Geoffrey of Monniouth, which everywhere excited an extraordinary sensation, had become European. To the Norman and French poets it had become known, long before the appearance of Geoffrey s book, through the Breton lays ; and the mysticism, the tender depths of senti ment, the wild flights of imagination and fancy which were found in these lays, had so captivated and dazzled them as to induce them almost to desert their own rough Chansons de Gesle, of which Charlemagne was the chief figure, for this new field. A succession of startling inci dents, in which giants, knights, dwarfs, fairies, and goblins were actors, and a nature in mystic sympathy with man was the background, appealed to the feelings of wonder and awe; the instinct of revenge and the lust of war were gratified by battle-recitals innumerable, while around the chief characters of the legends there floated the rapture and the hyperbole of amorous passion. In the Brut of Wace, founded on Geoffrey s work, we find the story of Arthur in ample proportions, and the &quot; Round Table &quot; appears for the first time &quot; Fist reis Ertur la R untie Table, Dunt Bretun dient meinte fable.&quot; The exuberance of invention here attributed to the Bretons was faithfully imitated by the poets of northern France. Chrestien of Troyes, born near the middle of the 12th century, besides versifying many tales from Ovid, re produced parts of the Arthur legend in his poem on King Mark and Yseult the Blonde, and the Chevalier au Lion. In these, however, there is no mention of the Graal. Sud denly a narrative, possibly in Latin but more probably in French prose, makes its appearance, containing the story of the commission of the Holy Graal to Joseph of Arima- thea, as given above, of his subsequent adventures in Syria and elsewhere, and of the ultimate arrival of his son, his brother-in-law, and others of his kindred, in Britain, where they settle in the island of Avallon. The birth of Arthur is prophesied in this narrative, but otherwise he is scarcely mentioned. About the same time, the prose romances of Lancelot (part i.) and Tristan, containing rich develop ments of the Arthurian legend, made their appearance and were warmly welcomed. The first is ascribed in the MSS. to Walter Map, and the second to Luc or Luces de Gast ; but both statements, in the opinion of M. Paulin Paris, are extremely doubtful. At any rate, if Map wrote the first part of Lancelot, he continued and finished it in a totally different spirit. The first part is mere love and chivalry, &quot; the most secular,&quot; says M. Paulin Paris, &quot;of all romances&quot;; while the second part is the most mystical of all. The first part contains no allusion to the Graal ; in the second it is an element of overpowering interest. Lancelot joins in the quest for the Graal, fails to see it or only half sees it, repents, becomes a holy hermit, and dies. Tristan in its original form was the legend of a favourite Breton hero ; it was then connected with the cycle of Arthur ; lastly, per haps by the same powerful hand that transmuted Lancelot, it was brought within the sweep of the Graal conception. But who invented the story of Joseph of Arimathea 1 or Father, who connected that story with the Graal legend, and both with Arthur 1 ? The importance of a work of William of Malmesbury in assisting us to answer this question has been somewhat overlooked. In his treatise De Antiqidtate Glastoniensis Ecclesice, written probably soon after Henry of Blois, abbot of Glastonbury, to whom it is dedicated, was raised to the see of Winchester (1129), Malmesbury records with considerable detail the legend which brought Joseph to Glastonbury, and made him the first preacher of Christianity to the Britons. Everything connected with Glastonbury had a duodenary character ; Joseph was sent to Britain by St Philip the evangelist as the chief among twelve missioners ; the holy men who afterwards tenanted the abbey always sought to maintain the number of twelve ; Glasteing, from whom the place was named, was one of twelve brothers ; the chief estate of the abbey was called &quot;the Twelve Hides,&quot; &c. This same feature distinctly reappears in the Graal legend, where Bron, the brother-in- law of Joseph, has twelve sons, who are all sent to Britain, but one among them, Alain, who renounces marriage, is set over the rest. Again, we read in Malmesbury that Avallon is another name for Glastonbury ; and in the Graal legend we read that Joseph s kindred are directed by a divine voice to seek, in the far west, the &quot; valleys of Avaron.&quot; Lastly, in the strange story about the altar called &quot; sapphirus,&quot; which angels brought from Palestine to St David, and which after a long disappearance was rediscovered in Malmesbury s own day, we seem to lay our finger, as it were, on the origin, the rudimentary suggestion, of the Graal conception. Now if we accept the general testimony of the MSS., and assume without further proof that Map composed, whether in Latin or in French, the original book of the Saint Graal, the genesis of the work seems not difficult to trace. In early life Map was a canon of Salisbury (see Wright s preface to the De Nugis Curialium) ; either after wards or at the same time he was parish priest of Westbury near Bristol. Gloucestershire and Wiltshire are both neigh bouring counties to Somersetshire, in which Glastonbury was the most sacred and celebrated spot. Visiting that ancient abbey, Map would have become acquainted with the legend of Joseph of Arimathea in all its details ; and he would have seen the altar said to have been transported by angels from Palestine, and which, long hidden from mortal sight on account of the wickedness of the times, had lately been revealed and reinstated. His versatile and capacious mind would, as a matter of course, have been familiar with the whole Arthur legend as it then (1170-1180) existed, if for no other reason, because he lived in the very part of England which was studded with Arthurian sites. He fully answers to the description of the &quot; great clerks &quot; who, according to Robert de Boron first made and told the his tory of the Graal. He seems to have conceived the vast design of steeping the Arthurian legend, and through it the whole imaginative literature of the age, in the doctrine of the Christian sacrifice. He is generally credited in the MSS. with the composition of the Saint Graal (containing the legend of Joseph of Arimathea), of the Quest of the /Saint Graal, of Lancelot in whole or in part, and of the Mort Artur. But it appears that no MS. of any of these romances now exists of an earlier date than 1274, and it is certain that a set of &quot;arrangers&quot; and continuators (like the rhapsodists and cyclic poets of the Homeric epos) com menced their confusing operations on the legend at an early period. Hence it seems impossible now to recover the exact order in which the different romances were composed.

3. On the origin of the word Graal, the opinion of M. Paulin Paris seems to be satisfactory. He thinks that graal is a corruption of gradale, or graduale, the Latin name for a liturgical collection of psalms and texts of scripture, so called &quot; quod in gradibus canitur,&quot; as the priest is passing 