Hesperia

Morte Arthur, and Malory's great compilation in prose. In any event, the determining factor in the limitation of time which has here been adopted was that to have attempted to carry on the work any further would have meant an indefinite postponement of its completion.

In a domain where almost everything is the subject of controversy, as is the case with Arthurian romance, it is difficult for the author of a general treatise, like the present one, who has strong convictions in regard to the questions under debate, not to seem frequently over-dogmatic or even unfair to his opponents in the expression of these convictions. In the notes and in the division of the book entitled "Discussions", I have endeavored to justify at length my own position in many of these matters, but, owing to considerations of space, it has been obviously impossible to do this in all instances, and so I have often been compelled to content myself with inserting into my presentation of the subject such qualifying clauses as "in my opinion" and the like. But since such clauses are apt to become tiresome by repetition, I have on many occasions ventured to omit them, without intending, of course, to claim infallibility in leaving the expression of my views thus unqualified. As an example of such controversial questions the age-long debate concerning the debt of the Arthurian romances to Celtic sources may be cited. Like Professors Foerster and Golther before me, I am convinced that this debt has been, generally speaking, greatly exaggerated and that personal invention was the most important factor in the creation of these romances that we have, therefore, in this species of literature the products of a literary fashion steadily developed by successive generations of writers in an age when the sense of literary property was virtually nonexistent and men did not hesitate to use their predecessors' compositions for any purpose they chose not, in any essential degree, the reflection of a great body of oral tradition. My presentation

This is undeniably true of the prose romances. I believe, however, that if we deduct most of the lays and a few episodes (indicated passim below) in the earlier romances, the statement will also hold good of the metrical romances. After all, most of the extant

of the matter proceeds, accordingly, from this point of view, although I have, of course, tried to be fair to the scholars who espouse the opposite theory. Indeed, my position with regard to the whole general question concerning the folk-tale sources of the Arthurian romances will be found to be somewhat similar to that just indicated in the case of the Celtic problem. For, even apart from the question of specifically Celtic sources, in my opinion, the element of individual invention and of purely literary origins in the romances has been unduly minimized. The authors of these romances were primarily poets, not transcribers of folk-tales, and it seems strange that scholars should so often have imputed to them the strictest accuracy in following imaginary folk-tale sources when we know that even the professional collectors of folk-tales in modern times have rarely taken down such stories from oral recitation without introducing into their texts numerous unauthorized alterations.

A further word of explanation is, perhaps, due with regard to the inclusion of many romances that are mediocre or even worse in the division of Vol. II which is devoted to analyses. This has been done with an especial view to the students of stories, who are, of course, particularly numerous in the field of mediaeval studies. The more tedious the romance, the more grateful for such condensed synopses, doubtless, will be the specialist who is endeavoring to run down the history of some motif in fiction. In any event, as I hardly need observe, these analyses have been grouped together in a section by themselves, so that they do not interrupt the general narrative of the development of Arthurian romance, and, consequently, readers who may be interested in the remainder of the book will be able to omit without inconvenience such analyses in this section as do not attract them, or, indeed, the whole section. In conclusion, I wish to express my gratitude to Professor James W. Bright for having offered to include this book in the

romances in verse were written after the composition of the prose romances had begun, and, obviously, there was no reason why the authors of the former and of the latter, respectively, should have drawn upon sources of a different character.

series, Hesperia, also, to the authorities of the British Museum and Widener Library (Harvard University), to whose well-known liberality and courtesy I have been deeply indebted whilst prosecuting my Arthurian studies in those institutions.

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