the Orlando Innamorato [1. 3.], is said to have been the work of Merlin; and in the 26th canto of the Orlando Furioso, there is described a fountain, one of four which the enchanter formed in France. It was of the purest marble, on which_coming events were portrayed in the finest sculpture. In the same poem, Bradamante arrives one night at the lodge of Tristan (Rocca di Tristano), where she is conducted into a hall adorned with prophetic paintings, which demons had executed in a single night under the direction of Merlin. In the third canto of the Rinaldo, the knight of that name arrives with Isolero at two equestrian statues; the one of Lancelot, the other of Tristan, both sculptured by the art of Merlin. Spenser represents Merlin as the artificer of the impenetrable shield, and other armour of Prince Arthur [Faery Queene, b. i. c. 7. st. 33-36], and of a mirror in which a damsel viewed her lover's shade. But Merlin had nearly obtained still higher distinction, and was on the verge of being raised to the summit of fabulous renown. The greatest of our poets, it is well known, before fixing on a theme more worthy of his genius, intended to make the fabulous history of Britain the subject of an epic poem, as he himself announces in his Epitaphium Damonis [v. 162, etc.]: Ipse ego Dardanias Rutupina per aequora puppes Dicam, et Pandrasidos regnum vetus Inogeniæ, Brennumque Arviragumque duces, priscumque Belinum, Tum gravidan Arturo fatali fraude Iögernen, It has been mentioned, in the abstract just given of the romance of Merlin, that when the magician, who is the chief character in the work, prepared the round table at Carduel, he left a place vacant for the St. Graal, or Holy Vessel brought to Britain by Joseph of Arimathea. Its quest is the most fertile source of adventures to the knights of the Round Table. Derived from the most varied sources reflecting most 1 Cf. Milton's " Mansus," v. 80. 2 From this point to the Perceval, p. 172 is by the present Editor. opposite characteristics, modified to suit their contemporaries by successive copyists, and loosely linked on one to another, the Romances of the Round Table, or Arthurian Cycle, present rather a motley patchwork than a sequential combination. That they embody elements of vitality is best evidenced by the fact that they afforded a fruitful theme for the most renowned productions of those dialects of Europe which were then crystallizing into the chief languages of the West; that they powerfully aided the survival of the dialects reserved for this destiny; and, that in our own day, as in the past, they supply subjects for some of the greatest pens in literature. They comprise not only elements, but tendencies the most diverse, and the conjunction must, at least viewed from the standpoint of modern criticism, I think, on the whole, be admitted to be crude, violent, and incongruous. We find too often unintelligibly and unsatisfactorily associated with the incidents of the story cloudy reminiscences of a Celtic heroic age and mythology, vague echoes of Celtic struggles with other Aryan peoples that in Great Britain and Little Britain alike were ever pressing the Kymri westwards from their lands. These again are mingled with episodes of knightly daring and generous dealing, while a lax morality-the reflex, perhaps, of pagan liberty or troubadour licence-alternates with strivings after high Christian ideals. To all this is superadded an element not only Christian, but mystical and ascetical, of clearly ecclesiastical origin; it is made to serve indeed in some sort as a connecting thread between the romances of the Graal, Merlin, the Quest of the Graal, Lancelot of the Lake, and Morte Arthur, and yet appears as a somewhat alien and incongruous interpolation, and may have been introduced as an antidote to the immorality prevailing through many parts of the cycle. This mystical element is embodied in the ROMANCE OF THE GRAAL,1 which is usually placed at the head of the group of romances above specified, supplying the place of an intro1 See supp. note, and appendix No. 2. duction without which they are incomplete. The opening portion of the Graal legend is clearly traceable to very early sources, and the whole story has been indefinitely varied by Chrestien de Troyes, Menessier, Wolfram von Eschenbach, Albrecht von Scharfenberg, Robert de Thornton, Lonelich, and other medieval poets. The oldest literary composition, however, in which the story has come down to us, and which is more immediately the groundwork of these romances, appears to be the Joseph of Arimathea or Short Graal, generally ascribed to and ostensibly written by Robert de Borron,' a trouvère and sort of secretary attached to Gautier de Montfaucon. Of this work in a metrical dress, which was probably Borron's form of composition, one MS.2 of the late thirteenth century alone is known. Several MSS. of the same work in prose are extant, and their interconcordance shows them to contain a text not widely differing from the original production. It should, however, be stated that it has been inferred from allusions in Wolfram von Eschenbach's "Parzival," composed early in the thirteenth, that in the preceding century a French trouvère, Guyot, was the first to compose on the subject of the Graal a poem, now lost, which supplied the basis not only of Wolfram's "Parzival," but of the Perceval-le-Gallois left unfinished by Chrétien de Troyes, who flourished in the same century, as well as of Borron's and all subsequent compositions on the same theme. Borron winds up the poem by saying he would fain follow up the adventures of Alain and Petrus, two of the personages, but believes no one could do so without knowing the Great History of the Graal, which at the time of writing had never been reproduced by mortal hand [from the divinely written volume of which more anon]. A ce tems que je la retreis, O mon Seigneur Gautier en peis 1 See Hucher, Le Saint-Graal, tome i., p. 368, etc. 2 Published by F. Michel, Bordeaux, 1841, 300 copies, reprinted at the end of vol. i. of Lonelich's "Seynt Graal," by the Roxburghe Club. 1861. And further announces his intention of collecting or combining the remaining histories, if he can get access to the book containing them, and since published as M. Paulin Paris interprets. Mais je fais bien a tous savoir Se en livre les puis trouver. The verses, however, are not free from ambiguity, from which the best French scholars have been unable to clear them. Borron meanwhile proceeds to the Merlin. The grant estoire dou Graal has been thought to refer to the longer Graal, not to be confounded with the quest of the Graal, an entirely different work, ascribed to a Welshman, Walter Map, archdeacon of Oxford towards the latter part of the twelfth century, which professes in the prologue to be a volume written by Christ himself, and given to a hermit in "Britain" in the year A.D. 717, and which, together with its recipient, underwent many preternatural vicissitudes, including a trip to Norway and back. This romance may be regarded as a recast of the Shorter Graal of Borron, composed, however, in a much more imaginative_vein, and augmented with numerous adventures, episodes, and spiritual allegories, wholly wanting in the Shorter Graal, and, indeed, quite foreign to its bald and meagre character. It has been suggested that it was produced in collaboration by Map and Borron, who may have met at Fontainebleau, near which, according to M. Hucher, Borron's estates were situate during a mission on which Map is known to have been sent to Louis le Jeune. I do not, however, see how this theory can be reconciled with the lines quoted above, unless the statement which indeed usually appears in the manuscripts of the Greater Graal, that the work was translated by Borron from a Latin original, be taken in good faith. It is most questionable whether it should be so taken, and I think the following considerations render the point very doubtful. The Longer Graal was probably feigned to have been translated from Latin simply because that was the only language in which it would plausibly support its pretended Divine origin. This purpose would, however, be as well served by a bare assertion, as by the adhibition of a Latin text, which accordingly never existed, for the work is patently intended for perusal in knightly circles where the clerkly tongue would be unintelligible. It is, too, altogether unlikely that Borron knew Latin-indeed, I think his writings furnish indications that he did not. Moreover, the Greater Graal, though ecclesiastical inspiration is easily discernible in it, is unlike works written in Latin, and does not bear the stamp of a monastic story, with the exception of those parts that are identic in substance with the Shorter Graal, which probably embodies monkish legends based on apocryphal Scriptures. I proceed here to give a brief abstract of the Shorter Graal, noting by the way some of the differences between it and the Greater Graal. Upon hearing of Christ's death, the "Chevalier" Joseph of Arimathea, the subordinate and friend of Pilate, obtains from the latter the body of the Redeemer. As the Jews object to the grant, Pilate orders Nicodemus to support Joseph with his authority. To the latter Pilate gives a dish which a Jew had brought to him from the house of Simon the leper, where the Saviour had used it for the Last Supper. In this "vaissel" Joseph, while preparing the body of our Lord for sepulture, collects the gore from the sacred wounds, remembering that the rock at the foot of the cross had been split by the blood of Christ which had fallen on it." Subsequently the Jews, fearing the popular effect of the resurrection, plot secretly to kill Joseph and Nicodemus, so that, should the Emperor Titus require them to produce Christ's body, they might say that it had been given to Joseph and Nicodemus, and that these had since disappeared. Nicodemus escapes, but Joseph is, by order of 1 In the Greater Graal it is Joseph himself who takes the dish from the house where the Last Supper had been celebrated. 2 This is an old tradition frequently mentioned in ancient accounts of the Holy Places. It was a pious allegorical idea, rather than a belief, that the Cross had been erected over the tomb of the first man, and that the blood of the Second Adam had fallen upon the skull of the first Adam, when redemption of his progeny was consummated. |