attributed to her in _Sir Launfal_, and only in _Sir Launfal_, an almost undoubtedly Celtic offshoot of the Arthurian Legend, is equally alien from her character. We see Iseult planning the murder of Brengwain with equal savagery and ingratitude, and we feel that it is no libel. On the other hand, though Tristram's faithfulness is proverbial, it is an entirely different kind of faithfulness from that of Lancelot--flightier, more passionate perhaps in a way, but of a less steady passion. Lancelot would never have married Iseult the White-handed. [Footnote 55: It is fair to say that Mark, like Gawain, appears to have gone through a certain process of blackening at the hands of the late romancers; but the earliest story invited this.] It is, however, quite easy to understand how, this Tristram legend existing by hypothesis already or being created at the same time, the curious centripetal and agglutinative tendency of mediaeval romance should have brought it into connection with that of Arthur. The mere fact of Mark's being a vassal-king of Greater Britain would have been reason enough; but the parallel between the prowess of Lancelot and Tristram, and between their loves for the two queens, was altogether too tempting to be resisted. So Tristram makes his appearance in Arthur's court, and as a knight of the Round Table, but as not exactly at home there,--as a visitor, an "honorary member" rather than otherwise, and only an occasional partaker of the home tournaments and the adventures abroad which occupy Arthur's knights proper. [Sidenote: _Sir Lancelot._]