The account which Geoffrey himself gives of the origin of his history Is tide r that Walter Caleniva, archdeacon of Oxford, finding a book in Brittany. on the deeds of King Arthur, gave it to him to translate, having a favourable opinion of his Latin style, and that his work is neither more nor less than a version of this original. It is so evident that if be wished his production to pas@ for a history, it was advisable to say something of this kind, and it has been so customary for writers of fiction to do so, from before Tirant the White down to after Don Quixote, that this statement carries no great weight In itself. At first sight it seems confirmed by the fact that there is a book in Welsh passing by the name of the Chronicle of Tysilio; which corresponds exactly with Geoffrey of Monmouth. Unluckily, however, it le evidently translated from the Latin, and et the end of the manuscript containing it is this singular note ; " I, Walter, archdeacon of Oxford, turned this book from Welsh into Latin, and in my old age I turned it again from Latin into Welsh." The perplexity is therefore only increased by a statement which introduces the name of Walter, the archdeacon, not merely as the patron of Geoffrey, but as himself the translator. There is fresh material for controversy in the question whether the book said to have been found in Brittany may nut have been in Breton, instead of Welsh, and both Mr. Thomas Wright, and Mr. Stephens, of Merthyr Tydvil, have arguments in favour of the Annorican origin of the legend of Arthur, but no such book is to be found in the one language any more than in the other. George Ellis, the friend of Sir Walter Scott, in the introduction to his ' Specimens of the early English Romances,' in which there is as admirable analysis of Geoffrey of Monmouth, gives reasons for believing that his history was really translated from a Welsh original.
There are still extant in Welsh a series of chivalric legends relating to the time of King Arthur and the Round Table, which may possibly have existed in a rude shape before the time of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and furnished him with some of his materials. In their present form they are much more elegant and finished than in his history, and embrace stories and particulars that he would hardly have passed over had he known them. These narratives now go by the general name of the Mabinegion; or Children's Tales, the name which may be appropriate to some being applied to all. They are contained in a splendid manuscript volume of more than 700 pages, in double columns, preserved iu the library of Jesus College, at Oxford, and known by the name of the 'Red Book of Hergest; trout the place at which it was originally discovered. The date of its transcription has been assigned by antiquaries to about 1370, or the close of the 14th century ; but towards the end of the volume there are Inserted, it is supposed in his own handwriting, many of the poems of Lewis Glyn Cothi, who flourished in the 15th, after the invention of printing. Were the date of the composition of the tales no earlier than that of their transcription, they Weida not be original. The stories of
the Knight of the Lion, the Knight of the Sword,' Lancelot of the Lake,' and others which occur in Welsh prose in the ' Red Beek of Hergest,' were extant in French verse from the pen of Chrdtien de Troyes before 1200, and as early as 1225 the Arthurian tales had been translated from French verse into Icelandic prose, at the instance of King Hakon hlakonsson of Norway. It is to be observed also that the manuscript volume contains other tales than thew belong ing to the Arthurian cycle, Sir Bevis of I lampton; the 'Seven Wise Masters of Rome,' and the s Ilistory of Charlemagne.' This is pointed out in the valuable preface and notes appended to the edition of the Mabinogion ' in Welsh and English, published in the years between 1838 and 1849, in three large volumes, by Lady Charlotte Guest, now Lady Charlotte Schreiber. The Mabinogion; the most attractive lady's book in the Welsh language, has appropriately been edited by a lady, and the volumes are in typography and embellishment by far the handsomest that have ever issued from the Cambrian press. • On the whole, though there are arguments against it into which our limits will not permit us to enter, the preponderanee of evidence amine to be in favour of the Welsh of the romantic fictions connected with the Round Table of King Arthur, and thus of the Welsh origin of chivalrie fiction in general. The reasons in support have been ably summed up in an ' Essay on the influence of Welsh Tradition upon European Literature,' by Mr. J. D. Harding, who also refers to the high authority of a scholar whose view of the subject was taken from a different point—Mr. Panizzl, of the British Museum. In the celebrated Easily on the Narrative Poetry of the Italians,' prefixed to his edition of Boiardo and Ariosto. Mr. Paniezi states, as the result of his researches, that "All the chivalrous fictions since spread through Europe appear to have had their birth in The narrative of Brutes and his expedition from Troy, given by Geoffrey of Monmouth, was, as we have seen, adopted for some centuries, In spite of the energetic protest of William of Newburgh, as the basis of popular English history. Yet it was totally inconsistent with another history of the colonisation of Britain, which, if we are to believe its supporters, was current long before Geoffrey of Monmouth, in the so-called Triads.' Theme constitute the most peculiar feature in the whole of Welsh literature. A 'Triad 'is the enumeration of three persons, or events, or observations, strung together in one short sentence by some thread of connection. This form of composition has been so popular among the Welsh that, brief as most of the Triads are, the collection of them occupies more than 170 pages in double columns in the Myvyrian Archaiology: A few instances of Triads of different kinds and different ages, taken from the preface to Owen Pugbe'e translation of Llywarch Heil, and other sourees *ill show of what elegance they are susceptible.