[34] The only fault alleged against Lancelot's person by carpers was that he was something "pigeon"--or "guardsman"--chested. But Guinevere showed her love and her wit, and her "valiancy" (for so at least on this occasion we may translate _vaillant_) by retorting that such a chest was only big enough--and hardly big enough--for such a heart. [35] Some of the later "redactors" of the Vulgate may perhaps have unduly multiplied his madnesses, and have exaggerated his early shyness a little. But I am not sure of the latter point. It is not only "beasts" that, as in the great Theocritean place, "go timidly because they fear Cythera"; and a love charged with such dread consequences was not to be lightly embarked upon. [36] The early _Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere_, though only external, is perfect. Many touches in the _Idylls_ other than the title-one are suitable and even subtle; but the convertite in that one is (as they say now) "unconvincing." The simpler attitude of the rejection of Lancelot in the verse _Morte_ and in Malory is infinitely better. As for Morris's two pieces, they could hardly be better in themselves as poems--but they are scarcely great on the novel side. [37] Disagreeable, that is to say, as a sister and sister-in-law. There must have been something attractive about her in other relations. [38] Compare one of the not so very many real examples of Ibsen's vaunted psychology, the placid indifference to her own past of Gina in the _Wild Duck_. [39] He had said that if he were a woman he would give Lancelot anything he asked; and the Queen, following, observes that Gawain had left nothing for a woman to say. [40] _Nos passions ont quelque chose d'infini_, says Bossuet. [41] [Greek: helandros, heleptolis]. She had no opportunity of being [Greek: helenaus]. [42] Hawker's security as to Cornish men and things is, I admit, a little Bardolphian. But did he not write about the Quest? (This sort of argument simply swarms in Arthurian controversy; so I may surely use it once.) Besides there is no doubt about the blueness of the sea in question; though Anthony Trollope, in _Malachi's Cove_, has most falsely and incomprehensibly denied it. [43] That this is a real sign of decadence and unoriginality, the further exaggeration of it in the case of the knights of the _Amadis_ cycle proves almost to demonstration. [44] After the opening sentence I have dropped the historic present, which, for a continuance, is very irritating in English. [45] Lancelot himself has told us earlier (_op. cit._ i. 38) that, though he neither knew nor thought himself to be a king's son, he was commonly addressed as such. [46] Lionel (very young at the time) had wept because some one mentioned the loss of his inheritance, and Lancelot (young as he too was) had bidden him not cry for fear of landlessness. "There would be plenty for him, if he had heart to gain it."