If, as I think may fairly be done, the glory of the Legend be chiefly claimed for none of these, but for English or Anglo-Norman, it can be done in no spirit of national _pleonexia_, but on a sober consideration of all the facts of the case, and allowing all other claimants their fair share in the matter as subsidiaries. From the merely _a priori_ point of view the claims of England--that is to say, the Anglo-Norman realm--are strong. The matter is "the matter of Britain," and it was as natural that Arthur should be sung in Britain as that Charlemagne should be celebrated in France. But this could weigh nothing against positive balance of argument from the facts on the other side. The balance, however, does not lie against us. The personal claim of Walter Map, even if disproved, would not carry the English claim with it in its fall. But it has never been disproved. The positive, the repeated, attribution of the MSS. may not be final, but requires a very serious body of counter-argument to upset it. And there is none such. The time suits; the man's general ability is not denied; his familiarity with Welshmen and Welsh tradition as a Herefordshire Marcher is pretty certain; and his one indisputable book of general literature, the _De Nugis Curialium_, exhibits many--perhaps all--of the qualifications required: a sharp judgment united with a distinct predilection for the marvellous, an unquestionable piety combined with man-of-the-worldliness, and a toleration of human infirmities. It is hardly necessary to point out the critical incompetence of those who say that a satirist like Map could not have written the _Quest_ and the _Mort_. Such critics would make two Peacocks as the simultaneous authors of _Nightmare Abbey_ and _Rhododaphne_--nay, two Shakespeares to father the _Sonnets_ and the _Merry Wives_. If any one will turn to the stories of Gerbert and Meridiana, of Galo, Sadius, and the evil queen in the _Nugae_, he will, making allowance for Walter's awkward Latin in comparison with the exquisite French of the twelfth century, find reasons for thinking the author of that odd book quite equal to the authorship of part--not necessarily the whole--of the Arthurian story in its co-ordinated form.