In divers lands, innumerable poets with diverse tastes set themselves to make new versions of the legend.  Characteristics of the Arthurian tale were grafted upon an entirely different stock, as was done by Boiardo in Italy, making confusion worse confounded to the modern Arthurian scholar.  Boiardo expressly says in the ‘Orlando Innamorato’ that his intention is to graft the characteristics of the Arthurian cycle upon the Carlovingian French national epic stock.  He wished to please the courts, whose ideal was not the paladins, but Arthur’s knights.  The “peers” of the Charlemagne legend are thus transformed into knights-errant, who fight for ladies and for honor.  The result of this interpenetration of the two cycles is a splendid world of love and cortesia, whose constituent elements it defies the Arthurian scholar to trace.  Truly, as Dr. Sommer has said in his erudite edition of Malory’s ‘La Morte d’Arthur.’  “The origin and relationship to one another of these branches of romance, whether in prose or in verse, are involved in great obscurity.”  He adds that it would almost seem as though several generations of scholars were required for the gigantic task of finding a sure pathway through this intricate maze.  And M. Gaston Paris, one of the foremost of living Arthurian scholars, has written in his ‘Romania’:  “Some time ago I undertook a methodical exploration in the grand poetical domain which is called the cycle of the Round Table, the cycle of Arthur, or the Breton cycle.  I advance, groping along, and very often retracing my steps twenty times over, I become aware that I am lost in a pathless maze.”

There is a question, moreover, whether Geoffrey’s book is based mainly upon inherited poetical material, or is largely the product of Geoffrey’s individual imagination.  The elder Paris, M. Paulin Paris, inclined to the view that Nennius, with hints from local tales, supplied all the bases that Geoffrey had.  But his son, Professor Gaston Paris, in his ‘Litterature Francaise au Moyen Age,’ emphasizes the importance of the “Celtic” contribution, as does also Mr. Alfred Nutt in his ’Studies in the Arthurian Legend.’  The former view emphasizes the individual importance of Geoffrey; the latter view places the emphasis on the legendary heritage.  Referring to this so-called national poetry, Ten Brink says:—­

“But herein lies the essential difference between that age and our own:  the result of poetical activity was not the property and not the production of a single person, but of the community.  The work of the individual singer endured only as long as its delivery lasted.  He gained personal distinction only as a virtuoso.  The permanent elements of what he presented, the material, the ideas, even the style and metre, already existed.  The work of the singer was only a ripple in the stream of national poetry.  Who can say how much the individual contributed to it, or where in his poetical recitation memory