Even now we are not through with this story of the Arthurian legends: it does not end with the priest Layamon. After printing was invented, and an easier way of making books was in vogue than the old one of tediously copying them upon parchment--I say in this new day of printing a certain Sir Thomas Mallory, who lived at the same time with Caxton, the first English printer, did, at the instance, I think, of that printer--put all these legends we speak of into rather stiff, homely English prose--copying, Caxton tells us, from a French original: but no such full French original has been found; and the presumption is that Mallory borrowed (as so many book-makers did and do) up and down, from a world of manuscripts. And he wrought so well that his work had great vogue, and has come to frequent issue in modern times, under the hands of such editors as Southey, Wright, Strachey and Lanier. In the years following Mallory, succeeding writers poached frequently upon the old Arthur preserve--bit by bit[19]--till at last, in our day, Tennyson told his “Idyl of the King”-- “----and all the people cried, Arthur is come again: he cannot die. And those that stood upon the hills behind Repeated--Come again, and thrice as fair.” _Early Norman Kings._ We come back now from this chase of Arthur, to the time of the Early Norman Kings: Orderic Vitalis,[20] of Normandy, William of Malmsbury,[21] Matthew Paris,[22] William of Newburgh,[23] (whose record has just now been re-edited and printed in England,) and Roger of Hoveden,[24] were chroniclers of this period; but I am afraid these names will hardly be kept in mind. Indeed, it is not worth much struggle to do so, unless one is going into the writing of History on his own account. Exception ought perhaps to be made in favor of Matthew Paris, who was a monk of St. Albans, who won his name from studying at Paris (as many live students of that day did), who put a brave and vehement Saxonism of thought into his Latin speech--who had art enough to illustrate his own Chronicle with his pencil, and honesty enough to steer by God’s rule only and not by the King’s. One should remember, too, that this was about the period of the best Provençal balladry (in which Richard Cœur de Lion was proficient);--that strain of mediæval music and love regaling the Crusader knights on their marches toward Judea, and that strain of music and love waking delightful echoes against Norman castle-walls on their return. Again, one should keep note of the year when _Magna Charta_ was granted by King John (1215), and remember, furthermore, that within ten years of the same date (1205) Layamon probably put the finishing touches to his _Brut_, and the Arthurian stories I was but now speaking of.