Page:Speeches and addresses by the late Thomas E Ellis M P.pdf/105

 all nations." This Brut of Gruffydd ap Arthur became a corner-stone of romance, and there is scarcely a tale of chivalry down to the sixteenth century, which has not directly or indirectly received from it much of its colouring.

Wace of Jersey reproduced Geoffrey's book in Norman-French (the court language of the time), adding several Breton romances. Then Walter Map, born on the Welsh border, and with Welsh blood in his veins, the central literary figure of Henry II.'s reign, when the English were beginning to assert themselves after their conquest by the Normans—Walter Map moulded these growing Arthurian legends into a distinctively Christian mould. He gave the second great impetus to the spread and development of the Arthurian legends which made them the staple of the Romantic literature of Europe. He translated and amplified Lancelot of the Lake, the Morte d'Arthur, and the Quest of the Holy Grail. This strange tale of the Quest of the Holy Grail is the spiritualisation of the Romances. As nobody knew whence Arthur came, what the Round Table meant, how Merlin was able to