Page:Studies on the legend of the Holy Grail.djvu/265

Rh and of the innumerable exhortations addressed to them. But no skill is shown in the conduct of this plan, which is carried out chiefly by the introduction of numerous allegorical scenes which are made a peg for lengthy dogmatic and moral expositions. In this respect the author compares unfavourably with Robert de Borron, who shapes his story in full accord with his conception of the Grail itself, a conception deriving directly from the symbolic Christian nature he attributed to it, and who makes even such unpromising incidents as that of the Magic Fisher subserve his guiding idea.

If the author's way of carrying out his conception cannot be praised, how does it stand with the conception itself? The fact that the Quest is wholly disassociated from this earth at once indicates the standpoint of the romance. The first effect of the Quest's proclamation is to break up the Table Round, that type of the noblest human society of the day, and its final achievement brings cheer or strengthening to no living man. The successful questers alone in their unhuman realm have any joy of the Grail. The spirit in which they prosecute their quest is best exemplified by Sir Bors. When he comes to the magic tower and is tempted of the maidens, who threaten to cast themselves down and be dashed to pieces unless he yield them his love, he is sorry for them, but unmoved, thinking it better "they lose their souls than he his." So little had the Christian writer apprehended the signification of Christ's most profound saying. The character of the principal hero is in consonancy with this aim, wholly remote from the life of man on earth. A shadowy perfection at the outset, he remains a shadowy perfection throughout, a bloodless and unreal creature, as fit when he first appears upon the scene as when he quits it, to accomplish a quest, purposeless, inasmuch as it only removes him from a world in which he has neither part nor share. Such human interest as there is in the