M. W. MACCALLUM, M.A. PROFESSOR OF MODERN LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY CALIFORN GLASGOW JAMES MACLEHOSE AND SONS Publishers to the University PREFACE THE collection of Arthurian story elaborated during the Middle Ages was too notable and impressive to be forgotten in the sixteenth century, when the distinctively modern epoch of history began. At the same time, the world had changed, and the feeling that the subject was a great one was for long unaccompanied by insight into where its greatness lay. Hence for three centuries it rather tantalised than satisfied the demands of the poetic imagination; and its history during that period is very largely the record of tentative and irresolute efforts to enter into its spirit once more. It has found really sympathetic treatment only within the last sixty or sixty-five years, and, in its collective aspect, only at the hands of Tennyson. These later fortunes of the legend are, of course, much less important than its development during the Dark and the Middle Ages, but they are interesting and instructive in their own way. At any rate, it seemed worth while to give a more |