was presently to begin. In talking of La Mort Arthure, he complains that "English literature and English poetry suffer when so many pieces of this kind remain concealed and forgotten in our manuscript libraries"; and, after indicating their importance, he censures former times for preferring to them "uninteresting history," and overlooking or rejecting these "valuable remains which they despised as false and frivolous." When Arthurian story is recognised to be fiction, and yet has its dignity and worth acknowledged, a new period in its development is come.

1 History of English Poetry, vol. i., section 5.

CHAPTER III

THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL

THE whirligig of time had thus brought in his revenges, and Arthurian romances were reinstated in a position of interest and honour. And as the leaven of things new and old worked in the literary revival of the day, it came more and more to be seen not only that they claimed a scholarly veneration in their bygone forms, but that they were rich in suggestions for the imagination of the present. They awoke the enthusiasm of the rustic genius, John Leyden (1775-1811), whose twin gifts for poetry and for research, never, alas! to mature to perfect fulness, admirably qualified him to feel the inspiration of such legendary themes. The verses of his Scenes of Infancy, published in 1803, are mere poetical splinters of his many-sided activity, that perhaps might never have been gathered from his workshop but for the pressure of pecuniary need. But how bold and lofty a tone the memories of Arthur and his fate breathe into these celebrations of the scenery and folklore of Leyden's native border-land! 1

1 Poetical Works of John Leyden, 1875.

"Such strains the harp of haunted Merlin threw,

When from his dreams the mountain sprites withdrew;
While trembling to the wires that warbled still,
His apple-blossoms waved along the hill.
Hark, how the mountain echoes still retain
The memory of the prophet's boding strain!
'Once more begirt with many a martial peer
Victorious Arthur shall his standard rear,
In ancient1 pomp his mailèd bands display
While nations wondering mark their strange array,
Their proud commanding port, their giant form,
The spirit's stride that treads the northern storm.
Where fate invites them to the dread repast,
Dark Cheviot's eagles swarm on every blast;
On Camlan bursts the sword's impatient roar,
The war-horse wades with champing hoof in gore,
The scythed car on grating axle rings;

Broad o'er the field the ravens join their wings,
Above the champions in the fateful hour
Floats the black standard of the evil power."

But Leyden, with all his poetical verve, was still more a scholar and a linguist; he wanted the repose, the self-control, the sense of form that are necessary for sustained creation; and, with a recognition of his limitations, not too frequent in such dual natures, he left an enterprise he foreshadowed to a mightier inspiration than his own.

66

Say, who is he, with summons strong and high,
Shall bid the charmèd sleep of ages fly;
Roll the long sound through Eildon's caverns vast,
While each dark warrior rouses 2 at the blast;
The horn, the falchion grasp with mighty hand,
And peal proud Arthur's march from Fairyland?

1 Some editions read "aged."
2 Some editions read "kindles."

Where every coal-black courser paws the green,
His printed step shall ever more be seen :
The silver shields in moony splendour shine.—

Beware, fond youth! a mightier hand than thine,
With deathless lustre in romantic lay

Shall Rymour's fate and Arthur's fame display.
O Scott! with whom in youth's serenest prime
I wove with careless hand the fairy rhyme,
Bade chivalry's barbaric pomp return

And heroes wake from every mouldering urn!
Thy powerful verse to grace the courtly hall
Shall many a tale of elder time recall,

The deeds of knights, the loves of dames proclaim,
And give forgotten bards their former fame !"

Scott's medievalism

This appeal to Sir Walter Scott was not misplaced and was not unheeded. was a master passion in his nature, that made him rejoice at once in its broadest dramatic effects and its minutest antiquarian details. The labours of scholars for three generations have doubtless made it possible to correct and supplement his reconstruction of the past even as a picturesque presentment of the times with which he dealt; but precisely this is the condemnation of critics who talk disparagingly of his attainments in this domain. For he more than any other single man created the interest that has led to further researches, and even as researcher he achieved proportionally more than most of those who lift up the heel against him. He not only had a large vision of the field of inquiry that has since been parcelled out to a crowd of day labourers, but with relatively scanty materials and defective apparatus he obtained results on which later specialists have built.

It was

inevitable that such a man should feel the power of the Arthurian romances in which so much of the medieval spirit had found its peculiar shrine. It was inevitable that he should do something to enlighten Europe as to their salient characteristics, and treat them not from a modern point of view or in vague generality, but with keen appreciation of their specific colour. We have seen how his allusion in Marmion to the later literary history of the stories just hits the mark; and that passage is only one among many of sympathetic recognition that are scattered up and down his writings. Nor does he confine himself to references. In 1805 he edited the old metrical romance of Sir Tristrem, and, since the manuscript was defective, he supplied the final episode himself with the delicate tact that springs from love. Of course, nowadays there is

more known about historical accidence and metric than was within the reach of Scott; but despite some slips, his stanzas have not the air of being interpolated; they are quite of a piece with the rest of the poem.

"Ysonde of Britanye

With the white honde,

The schip sche can see

Seyling to londe,

The white seyl tho marked sche;

'Yonder cometh Ysonde

For to reve fro me

Miin fals husbonde:

Ich sware

For il tho it schal be

That sche her hider bare.