At the ideal coronation of king Arthur, just mentioned, a tournament is described, as exhibited in its highest splendour. “Many knights,” says this Armoric chronicler, “famous for feats of chivalry, were present, with apparel and arms of the same colour and fashion. They formed a species of diversion, in imitation of a fight on horseback, and the ladies being placed on the walls of the castles, darted amorous glances on the combatants. None of these ladies esteemed any knight worthy of her love, but such as had given proof of his gallantry, in three several encounters.” Here is the practice of chivalry, under the combined ideas of love and military prowess, as they seem to have subsisted after the feudal constitution had acquired greater degrees, not only of stability, but of splendour and refinement. And, although a species of tournament was exhibited in France, at the reconciliation of the sons of Lewis the Feeble, at the close of the ninth century, and at the beginning of the tenth, the coronation of the emperor Henry, was solemnized with martial entertainments, in which many parties were introduced fighting on horseback, yet it was long afterwards that these games were accompanied with the peculiar formalities, and ceremonious usages here described. In the mean time, we cannot answer for the innovations of a translator, in such a description. The burial of Hengist, the Saxon chief, who is said to have been interred not after the _Pagan_ fashion, as Geoffrey renders the words of the original, but after the _manner of the Soldans_, is partly an argument, that our romance was composed about the time of the Crusades. It was not till those memorable campaigns of mistaken devotion, had infatuated the western world, that the Soldans, or sultans of Babylon, of Egypt, of Iconium, and other eastern kingdoms, became familiar in Europe. Not that the notion of this piece, being written so late as the crusades, in the least invalidates the doctrine here delivered. Not even if we suppose that Geoffrey was its original composer. That notion rather tends to confirm, and establish this system. On the whole it may be affirmed, that Geoffrey’s chronicle, which is supposed to contain the ideas of the Welsh bards, entirely consists of Arabian inventions. And in this view no difference is made, whether it was compiled about the tenth century, at which time, if not before, the Arabians, from their settlements in Spain, must have communicated their romantic fables to other parts of Europe, especially to the French; or whether it first appeared in the eleventh century, after the crusades had multiplied these fables to an excessive degree, and made them universally popular. And although the general cast of the inventions, contained in this romance, is alone sufficient to point out the source from whence they were derived, yet it is thought proper to prove to a demonstration what is here advanced, by producing and examining some particular passages.