King Arthur was a traditional and historic chieftain of rude times, the man of an epoch, a hero to be sung and remembered. His life must have been a tumult; his seventy odd battles were the events of his era. Whether he represents a nascent civilisation, or whether, following the Romans, he simply maintained a barbaric splendour in the cities they had made or by means of some enlightened laws they had instituted, is a matter of dispute. But he is the “gray king,” the elemental hero, not the advanced type. It is a remarkable fact that English scholars have until quite recently done so little to popularise Arthurian literature. Malory’s version remained almost inaccessible until Southey issued his edition, and the best work of all was undertaken for us in latter years by Dr. Sommer, a German. Considering the hold on the imagination which the romance possessed, little was done to elucidate the obscurities and to solve the mysteries concerning not only the authors but the heroes themselves and the land to which they belonged. Much has been conjectured, but we feel that we are dealing more with phantoms and fancies than with realities and facts. Yet what an inspiration King Arthur has been! His name has lingered, his memory has been treasured in national ballads. Poets have in all ages hovered round the subject, and some have alighted upon it, only perhaps to leave it again as beyond their scope. “The mightiest chiefs of British song Scorned not such legends to prolong.” Milton, Spenser, Dryden, Warton, Collins, Scott and Gray, together with derided and half-forgotten Blackmore; Lytton, with his ambitious epic, doomed to unmerited neglect; Rossetti, James Russell Lowell, and lastly, Arnold, Morris, Swinburne, and Tennyson--these have lifted the romance into the highest and purest realm of poetry, and have impregnated the story with new meanings and illuminated it with rich interpretation.