[B] In the more historical view of the position of Arthur, I have, however, represented it such as it really appears to have been,--not as the sovereign of all Britain, and the conquering invader of Europe (according to the groundless fable of Geoffrey of Monmouth), but as the patriot Prince of South Wales, resisting successfully the invasion of his own native soil, and accomplishing the object of his career in preserving entire the nationality of his Welsh countrymen. In thus contracting his sphere of action to the bounds of rational truth, his dignity, both moral and poetic, is obviously enhanced. Represented as the champion of all Britain against the Saxons, his life would have been but a notorious and signal failure; but as the preserver of the Cymrian Nationality--of that part of the British population which took refuge in Wales, he has a claim to the epic glory of success. It is for this latter reason that I have gone somewhat out of the strict letter of history, in the poetical licence by which the Mercians are represented as Arthur's principal enemies (though, properly speaking, the Mercian kingdom was not then founded): the alliance between the Mercian and the Welsh, which concludes the Poem--is at least not contrary to the spirit of History--since in very early periods such amicable bonds between the Welsh and the Mercians were contracted, and the Welsh, on the whole, were on better terms with those formidable borderers than with the other branches of the Saxon family. May I be permitted to say a word as to the metre I have selected?--One advantage it has,--that while thoroughly English, and not uncultivated by the best of the elder masters, it has never been applied to a poem of equal length, and has not been made too trite and familiar, by the lavish employment of recent writers.[C] Shakspere has taught us its riches in the Venus and Adonis,--Spenser in The Astrophel,--Cowley has sounded its music amidst the various intonations of his irregular lyre. But of late years, if not wholly laid aside, it has been generally neglected for the more artificial and complicated Spenserian stanza, which may seem, at the first glance, to resemble it, but which to the ear is widely different in rhythm and construction. [C] Southey has used it in the "Lay of the Laureate" and "The Poet's Pilgrimage,"--not his best-known and most considerable poems.