KD 1702/ 3937700 COPYRIGHT, 1903, BY Norwood Press J. S. Cushing & Co. - Berwick & Smith Co. THE IDYLLS OF THE KING. It is not known how early the legends of Arthur began to take form, nor how much foundation they had in fact. We first hear of them in Brittany, where, as they were passed down from generation to generation of Celts, they retained a pretty simple form. Arthur, the story ran, was a brave British king, who had a hand in the expulsion of the last Romans from Britain, and ruled wisely thereafter for many years. After the Norman Conquest of England, these legends were brought from Brittany to Wales, where they became common property. In 1147, Geoffrey of Monmouth, a Welsh priest in the court of Henry I, included the substance of them, with additions of his own, in his Latin prose History of the Kings of Britain. Wace, a Norman trouveur, rendered the legend in Norman French soon after; and from his narrative Layamon, a Saxon priest, transferred it to English verse. The situation is strange and suggestive: a Saxon tells, in the alliterative verse of his Teutonic inheritance, a story of the ancient Britons, which he has heard from a Norman, who gained it from a Latin work by a Welshman. Of such racial interweaving the fabric of modern English literature is made. Another notable writer of Layamon's period also illustrates the composite character of English blood and English letters in that day. William of Malmesbury was son of a Norman father and a Saxon mother. Like many other writers of his century, he produced various narratives in Latin dealing with English history. One of them is of more |