“One day
     For our delight, we read of Launcelot,
     How him love thralled.  Alone we were, and no
     Suspicion near us.  Oft-times by that reading
     Our eyes were drawn together, and the hue
     Fled from our altered cheek.  But at one point
     Alone we fell.  When of that smile we read,
     The wished smile, rapturously kissed
     By one so deep in love, then he, who ne’er
     From me shall separate, at once my lips
     All trembling kissed.  The book and writer both
     Were love’s purveyors.  In its leaves that day
     We read no more.”

This poetic material was appropriated also by the countrymen of Dante, Boiardo, Ariosto, and Tasso, by Hans Sachs in Germany, by Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton in England.  As Sir Walter Scott has sung:—­

     “The mightiest chiefs of British song
     Scorned not such legends to prolong.”

Roger Ascham, it is true, has, in his ‘Scholemaster’ (1570 A.D.), broken a lance against this body of fiction.  “In our forefathers’ tyme,” wrote he, “whan Papistrie, as a standyng poole, couered and ouerflowed all England, fewe bookes were read in our tong, sauyng certaine bookes of Cheualrie, as they sayd, for pastime and pleasure, which, as some say, were made in Monasteries, by idle Monkes, or wanton Chanons; as one for example, ‘Morte Arthure’:  the whole pleasure of which booke standeth in two speciall poyntes, in open mans slaughter, and bold bawdrye:  in which booke those be counted the noblest Knights, that do kill most men without any quarrell, and commit foulest aduoulteries by sutlest shiftes.”

But Roger’s characterization of “the whole pleasure of which booke” was not just, nor did it destroy interest in the theme.  “The generall end of all the booke,” said Spenser of the ‘Faerie Queene,’ “is to fashion a gentleman or noble person in vertuous and gentle discipline;” and for this purpose he therefore “chose the historye of King Arthure, as most fitte for the excellency of his person, being made famous by many men’s former workes, and also furthest from the daunger of envie, and suspition of present tyme.”

The plots for Shakespeare’s ‘King Lear’ and ‘Cymbeline’ came from Geoffrey’s ‘Historia Britonum,’ as did also the story of ‘Gorboduc,’ the first tragedy in the English language.  Milton intended at one time that the subject of the great poem for which he was “pluming his wings” should be King Arthur, as may be seen, in his ‘Mansus’ and ’Epitaphium Damonis.’  Indeed, he did touch the lyre upon this theme,—­lightly, it is true, but firmly enough to justify Swinburne’s lines:—­

“Yet Milton’s sacred feet have lingered there,
His lips have made august the fabulous air,
His hands have touched and left the wild weeds fair.”

But his duties as Latin Secretary to the Commonwealth diverted him from poetry for many years, and when the Restoration gave him leisure once more to court the Muse, he had come to doubt the existence of the Celtic hero-king; for in ‘Paradise Lost’ (Book i., line 579) he refers to