From this time we have in French the Story of the Holy Grail, the History of Merlin, Sir Launcelot of the Lake, the Quest of the Holy Grail, and the Death of Arthur. The first two have been attributed to Robert Borron, the latter three to Walter Map himself. But the whole subject appears to be wrapped in singular obscurity, and offers a field for considerable divergence of opinion. The latest dissertation on the question is that by Jessie L. Weston in her recent publications. (Nutt: London, 1901.) After the above, five more stories followed, such as Tristram and the history of King Pellinore by other writers. These later series of romances seem to have caught on better in France than in England. For only a few metrical compositions of this class are found in English MSS. prior to the days of Sir Thomas Malory, and these in documents of the fifteenth century. One alliterative tale, indeed, that of _Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight_, first printed by Sir F. Madden in 1839, and re-edited by Dr. Morris, is held by the latter to have been written about 1320. Sir Gawayne was Arthur’s nephew, and figures in the early stories as one of the purest models of knighthood, though very differently represented by the author of Tristram and subsequent writers, including even Malory, who drew from French sources. About the middle of the fifteenth century Henry Lonelich translated into English verse the prose narrative of the sacred Grail, and possibly this may have led Malory, the author of the more famous _Morte d’Arthur_, to produce, as he did about the year 1470, the remainder of the romances connected with the Holy Grail in English prose. It was one of the earliest books printed by William Caxton (1485), and certainly one of the finest examples of the prose of the pre-Elizabethan period. Sir Thomas Malory compiled it out of the French versions of “Merlin,” “Launcelot,” “Tristram,” the “Queste du Saint Graal,” and the “Mort Artur.” His own postscript at the end of the book fitly describes its scope in very quaint terms. It runs as follows:— Heere is the end of the whole booke of King Arthur and of his noble Knights of the round table, that when they were whole together there was ever an hundred and fortie. Also heere is the end of the death of King Arthur. I pray you all, gentlemen and gentlewomen, that read this book of King Arthur and his Knights from the beginning to the ending, pray for me while I am alive, that God send mee good deliverance. And when I am dead, I pray you all pray for my soule. For this booke was finished the ninth yeare of the raigne of King Edward the Fourth, by Sir Thomas Maleor, Knight, as Jesu help me for his great might, as hee is the servant of Jesu both day and night.