That our lovers felt a deep and absorbing passion, there can be no doubt.  Sir Dynas, the Seneschal, tells the Queen la Belle Isould that Sir Tristram is near:  “Thenne for very pure joye la Beale Isould swouned, & whan she myghte speke, she said, gentyl knyghte Seneschall help that I myghte speke with him, outher my herte will braste.”  They meet, and then “to telle the joyes that were between la Beale Isoud and sire Tristram, there is no tongue can telle it, nor herte thinke it, nor pen wryte it.”  When Tristram thought Isoud unfaithful, he “made grete sorowe in so much that he fell downe of his hors in a swoune, and in suche sorowe he was in thre dayes and thre nyghtes.”  When he left her, Isoud was found “seke in here bedde, makynge the grettest dole that ever ony erthly woman made.”  “Sire Alysander beheld his lady Alys on horsbak as he stood in her pauelione.  And thenne was he soo enamoured upon her that he wyst not whether he were on horsbak or on foote.”  Sir Gareth falls in love at first sight:  “and euer the more syr Gareth behelde that lady, the more he loued her, and soo he burned in loue that he was past himself in his reason, and forth toward nyghte they wente unto supper, and sire Gareth myghte not ete for his loue was soo hot that he wyst not wher he was.”

The Roman war introduced into the “Morte d’Arthur” is a curious illustration of the vagueness of the historical groundwork of the romances of chivalry.  The memory of Roman power was still too great to permit a warrior to achieve greatness without having matched his strength against that of Rome, and thus we have the singular spectacle of King Arthur with his adventurous knights, clad in mail, passing easily through “Almayne” into Italy, conquering giants by the way, and reducing the Emperor Lucius to dependence.

The story of the Saint Greal originally formed a distinct romance, but it was the dull production of some ascetic monk, who thought that the knights of the Round Table were too much occupied with secular pursuits, and who found no greater encomium to pass upon Sir Galahad, than to call him a “maid.”  But the idea of the Christian knighthood setting out to seek the Holy Cup was “marvellous and adventurous,” and so well suited to please the mediaeval mind that we find this quest introduced into several of the romances of chivalry, and it appears, though in an incomplete form, in the “Morte d’Arthur.”  The adventures met with by the knighthood are much the same as when they were pursuing a less lofty object.  Sir Galahad occupies the intervals between his serious occupations with rolling his father Sir Launcelot and other noble knights into the dust in the usual unsaintly fashion.  The supernatural element is stronger perhaps in the story of the Saint Greal than in any other romance, and the monkish inspiration of the work is everywhere manifest.  When Sir Galahad rescues the inmates of the Castle of Maidens by overthrowing their oppressors, the romancer points out that the Castle of Maidens “betokeneth the good souls that were in prison before the incarnation of Jesu Christ.”  It is here also that we learn that “Sir Launcelot is come but of the eighth degree from our Lord Jesu Christ, and Sir Galahad is of the ninth degree from our Lord Jesu Christ; therefore I dare say that they may be the greatest gentlemen of the world.”