Gaston Paris, that Malory had a now lost form of the ‘Lancelot,’ comparable to the ‘Suite de Merlin’ discovered only fifteen years since; and indeed believes that he has found some pages of this missing ‘Lancelot’ imbedded in a ‘Tristan’ MS. in the British Museum. But the work of this learned critic must be studied in itself, not in a summary. Of the light which these investigations throw upon the genius of Malory, and on the character of his art, I have already spoken. There is no title-page, as I have already mentioned, to the Caxton, that which is given by several bibliographers being only an extract, not very critically selected, from Caxton’s preface. But it is stated in Caxton’s colophon that the book was ‘entytled le morte Darthur,’ and he explains that it was so ‘entitled’ notwithstanding it treated of Arthur’s birth, life, and acts as well as death, and also of the adventures of his knights of the Round Table. And the concluding words of Malory, ‘Here is the end of the death of Arthur,’ taken with their context, point to the same title. It was indeed before Malory’s time, and has been ever since, the traditional title of this story. We have Mort Artus and Morte Arthure in the earlier times; Ascham, in Henry VIII’s reign, calls this book La Morte d’Arthure; Tyrwhitt, Mort d’Arthur; and Walter Scott and Southey, Morte Arthur, which last probably many of us are familiar with as the old name which we heard from our own fathers. §3. AN ESSAY ON CHIVALRY. St. Augustine replied to the enquiry, What is time? by saying, ‘I know when you do not ask me:’ and a like answer suggests itself to us if we try to find an adequate reply to the question, What is Chivalry? For chivalry is one of those words, like love, duty, patriotism, loyalty, which make us feel their meaning, and the reality of what they mean, though their ideal and comprehensive character hinders us from readily putting it into the forms of a definition. When the alchemist in the Eastern tale compounds, with all the resources of his art, the universal solvent before the expectant eyes of his pupil, the pupil, seeing the mysterious fluid lie quietly in the crucible, exclaims, with not unreasonable doubt, ‘O Sage, be not deceived: how can that which dissolves all things be itself contained in a ladle?’ And how shall chivalry, sparkling and flashing everywhere as it runs through that great complicated tissue of human life which we call modern civilisation,—how shall chivalry, the humaniser of society, be brought within the limits of a definition?