The first and the most important thing--a thing which has been by no means always or often done--is to keep the question of Arthur apart from the question of the Arthurian Legend. [Sidenote: _The personality of Arthur._] That there was no such a person as Arthur in reality was at one time a not very uncommon opinion among men who could call themselves scholars, though of late it has yielded to probable if not certain arguments. The two most damaging facts are the entire silence of Bede and that of Gildas in regard to him. The silence of Bede might be accidental, and he wrote _ex hypothesi_ nearly two centuries after Arthur's day. Yet his collections were extremely careful, and the neighbourhood of his own Northumbria was certainly not that in which traditions of Arthur should have been least rife. That Gildas should say nothing is more surprising and more difficult of explanation. For putting aside altogether the positive testimony of the _Vita Gildae_, to which we shall come presently, Gildas was, again _ex hypothesi_, a contemporary of Arthur's, and must have known all about him. If the compound of scolding and lamentation known as _De Excidio Britanniae_ is late and a forgery, we should expect it to contain some reference to the king; if it is early and genuine, it is difficult to see how such reference could possibly be omitted. [Sidenote: _The four witnesses._] At the same time, mere silence can never establish anything but a presumption; and the presumption is in this case rebutted by far stronger probabilities on the other side. The evidence is here drawn from four main sources, which we may range in the order of their chronological bearing. First, there are the Arthurian place-names, and the traditions respecting them; secondly, the fragments of genuine early Welsh reference to Arthur; thirdly, the famous passage of Nennius, which introduces him for the first time to probably dated literature; fourthly, the curious references in the above-referred-to _Vita Gildae_ of, or attributed to, Caradoc of Lancarvan. After this last, or at a time contemporary with it, we come to the comparatively detailed account of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and the beginning of the Legend proper. [Sidenote: _Their testimony._]