The origin of the material in the romances and the- manner of its transmission has long been the subjact of voluminous discussion. Some *cholars have maintained that there is nothing distinctively Celtic in the cycle beyond the names, the geographical setting, and an occa sional incident. Others, holding the stories to have been in large part the property of the ('eltie races, have discussed whether they were transmitted to the French poets in England or on the Continent, whether through the Armori cans or through the Welsh. Each of these theories of transmission has at present its ad herents among scholars; hot in the course of recent investigations the Celtic character and origin of the great body of the material has been steadily made clearer. The 'matter of Britain' has not been misnamed. Unfortunately, the remains of early Welsh literature are scanty, and little or nothing can be learned from them of the direct sources of the Arthurian stories. But the national hero tales of the Irish have been preserved in large quantities from very early times, and a comparison of this saga material with the mediaeval romances has de veloped many striking parallelisms which cannot be explained except by some theory of common origin. The pursuit of this line of investigation has yielded most important results in the last few years.
The story of Arthur and his Round Table has been less treated in modern than in early Eng lish literature. Still, it has engaged the atten time of great poets. Spenser introduced Arthur into the ['aerie Queene, but preserved very little of the substance of the old romances. Milton and Dryden both planned Arthurian epics, and then gave them up for other subjects. The romantic
revival of the Nineteenth Century brought the 'matter of Britain,' along with other medieval subjects, once more to the front. A number of episodes from the cycle were treated by the lesser poets of the period. and Tennyson pro duced in the Idylls of the King what is now without doubt the best-known version of these ancient tales.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. On the mythology: J. Rhys, Bibliography. On the mythology: J. Rhys, The Hibbe•t Lectures (London, 1886) ; Studies in the Arthurian Legend (Oxford, 1891) ; H. Zimmer, Yennins •indicatus (Berlin, 1893). On the transmission of the material of the ro mances: Gaston Paris, Histoire litteraire de in France, Vol. XXX. (Paris, 1888)•: and Zim mer, Oiittingische Gelehrte Anzeigcn (Gottingen, 1890) ; also a series of articles by Paris. and others in Romania, Vols. X. (Paris, 1881) and following. The works of Chrestien are being edited by W. Forster, and selections from his romances have been admirably translated into English by W. W. Newell in King Arthur and the Table Round (Boston, 1897). On the ro mances consult also: Paris, Les romans de In Table-Ronde (Paris, 1808-77), and Ward, Cata logue of Romances in the Department of Manu scripts in the British, Museum (London, 1883) ; for the early Welsh poetry, Skene, The Four Ancient Books of Wales (Edinburgh, 1868) ; and for the bearing of Irish literature on the Ar thurian question, A. C. L. Brown, Twain: a. Study in the Origins of Ar!hurian Romance (Boston, 1902) ; for a discussion of later Ar thurian literature. Ma•Callum, Tennyson's Idylls of the King and Arthurian Story from the Si*. teenth Century (Glasgow, 1894). See Ara,Losg;