The earliest legends of Arthur's exploits are to be found in the bardic lays attributed to the sixth and seventh centuries ("Myoyrian Archaeology of Wales," 1801). A Welsh collection of stories called the "Mabinogion," of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and translated into English by Lady Charlotte Guest in 1849, gives further Arthurian legends. Some of the stories "have the character of chivalric romances," and are therefore probably of French origin; while others "bear the impress of a far higher antiquity, both as regards the manners they depict and the style of language in which they are composed." These latter rarely mention Arthur, but the former belong, as Mr. Skene puts it, to the "full-blown Arthurian romance." Chretien de Troies, the most famous of the old French trouveres in the latter part of the twelfth century, made the Arthur legend the subject for his "Romans" and "Contes," as well as for two epics on Tristan; the Holy Grail, Peredur, etc., belonging to the same cycle. Early in the same century the Arthurian metrical romance became known in Germany, and there assumed a more animated and artistic form in the "Parzival" of Wolfram of Eschenbach, "Tristan und Isolt" of Gottfried of Strasburg, "Erec and Iwein" of Hartmann, and "Wigalois" of Wirnt. The most renowned of the heroes of the Arthurian school are Peredur (Parzival or Perceval), Tristan or Tristram, Iwein, Erec, Gawein, Wigalois, Wigamur, Gauriel, and Lancelot. From France the Arthurian romance spread also to Spain, Provence, Italy, and the Netherlands, even into Iceland, and was again transplanted into England. One of the publications that issued from the press of Caxton (1485) was a collection of stories by Sir Thomas Malory, either compiled by him in English, from various of the later French prose romances, or translated directly from an already existing French compendium. Copland reprinted the work in 1557, and in 1634 the last of the black-letter editions appeared. A reprint of Caxton's "Kynge Arthur," with an introduction and notes by Robert Southey, was issued in 1817--"The Byrth, Lyfe, and Actes of Kyng Arthur." The most complete edition is that by Thomas Wright, from the text of 1634.