In Spain “matter of Britain” took a new lease of life. In that country was produced the series of chivalric romances in prose, which began soon after the year 1300 with the _Amadis of Gaul_ (_i.e._, _Wales_), and continued for nearly three centuries, until, from their increasing extravagance, they fell into disrepute, and were finally slain by the satire of Cervantes. How these operated together with pastoral, to produce the sentimental _longueurs_ of La Calprenède and Scudéry in France of the seventeenth century, and thence affected the novel and drama of post-Restoration England, is told in the sketch of the literature of Spain. The affiliation to Celtic origins is in this case clear enough, but with the circuitous route there goes a gradual defection in that real Celtic spirit which was possessed by the original _Amadis_. * * * * * When we are asked at what date English literature is most distinctly affected by the creations of Celtic countries, we may reply that it is chiefly before the age of Chaucer, when the romantic legends of Arthur and his Table came through two channels; on the one hand through Breton sources, on the other through Wales. This is, in point of subject matter, the largest Celtic contribution on which we can lay our hand. To it we owe not only the Arthurian cycle of romances as we find them in Geoffrey, the _trouvères_, Layamon, and later in the compilation of Sir Thomas Malory (called _Morte D’Arthur_), which was one of the earliest books that Caxton chose to print; but also much reference in Spenser and Milton, as well as the whole substance of Tennyson’s _Idylls of the King_. To a once independent group of legends, afterwards brought into relation with the Arthurian, we owe the exquisite _Tristram and Iseult_ of Matthew Arnold. It was in “matter of Britain” that appeared the special vein of tender chivalry which passed into the romances, first of France, then of Italy and Spain. Not in Germany, not in Italy, not in Provence, not in Spain, did these stories of knightly loyalty and uttermost honour and devotion take their rise. It was in Northern France, where Franks and Normans were in contact with the large Celtic remnants of the Bretons. In all these legends there speaks the Celtic voice, rememberable and distinguishable everywhere by its prevailing melancholy, its devotion to a cause, be that cause right or wrong, be it strong or weak. For the rest, we are in no position to fix the first invention of the Quest of the Holy Grail, or any other legend of the cycle, upon any definite author. What we allow to Tennyson in his liberties with the details of the stories and the form they take, we must perforce allow to the many who had told and retold the same stories scores of times since the Celt of Britain first passed them on to Brittany.