Page:Studies on the legend of the Holy Grail.djvu/255

Arthurian romance, shared its success, than which nothing in all literary history is more marvellous. It was in the year 1145 that Geoffrey of Monmouth first made the legendary history of Britain accessible to the lettered class of England and Continent. He thereby opened up to the world at large a new continent of romantic story, and exercised upon the development of literature an influence comparable in its kind to that of Columbus' achievement upon the course of geographical discovery and political effort. Twenty years had not passed before the British heroes were household names throughout Europe, and by the close of the century nearly every existing literature had assimilated and reproduced the story of Arthur and his Knights. Charlemagne and Alexander, the sagas of Teutonic tribes, the tale of Imperial Rome itself, though still affording subject matter to the wandering jongleur or monkish annalist, paled before the fame of the British King. The instinct which led the twelfth and thirteenth centuries thus to place the Arthurian story above all others was a true one. It was charged with the spirit of romance, and they were pre-eminently the ages of the romantic temper. The West had turned back towards the East, and, although the intent was hostile, the minds of the western men had been fecundated, their imagination fired by contact with the mother of all religions and all cultures. The achievements of the Crusaders became the standard of attainment to the loftiest and boldest minds of Western Christendom. For these men Alexander himself lacked courage and Roland daring. The fathers had stormed Jerusalem, and the sons' youth had been nourished on tales of Araby the Blest and Ophir the Golden of strife with the Paynim, of the sorceries and devilries of the East. Nothing seemed impossible to a generation which knew of toils and quests greater than any minstrel had sung, which had beheld in the East sights as wondrous and fearful as any the jongleur could tell of. Moreover, the age was that of Knight Errantry, and of that phase of love in which every Knight must qualify himself for the reception of his lady's favours by the performance of some feat of skill and daring. Such an age and such men demanded a special literature, and they found it in adaptations of Celtic tales.