with a fainter confidence of having really landed ourselves at the goal, if we compare the Arthurian Tales with the monkish chronicle of Nennius. In that writer's bitter invective against Mael-Gwyn, who has on reasonable suggestions been identified with the legendary knight Lancelot, we discern a faint outline of the glorious personal qualities, as well as of the characteristic faults, which blend themselves into the impressive portrait, as drawn for us by his poets, of that medieval Achilles. It seems as if eminent men left an ineffaceable mark upon their times, as if, however completely the truth of history may be overshadowed and blotted out by bewildering myths and traditions-however absolutely the truth of circumstances may perish, the truth of character nevertheless will survive.

To go back, however, to Chevy Chase. In the reigns of Elizabeth and James I, the patriotism of England became intensified in all directions, particularly in the Scotch direction; the men of Devon and of Somerset would be as keen against the 'daughter of debate,' or the poisoner Kerr, as any native of Bamboroughshire or Otterburn; so that the glowing stanzas of Chevy Chase would make a welcome for themselves, in any part of England, as soon as they were understood. In order,

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however to get this opening for them, the language had to be somewhat changed, and immediately the required adapter arose. We have, as it happens, the two diminutive Iliads ready at hand, and whenever we please can compare them together. We see how the younger poet has dealt with the older, and accordingly may conjecture, if we choose, how such a process is apt to take place at other times. It must be confessed that, in this instance at any rate, the poem is not improved by it. I once travelled by rail in the same carriage with an enthusiastic and impassioned French cook; for three mortal hours did he hurl at my head a divine and conspicuous Philippic against the besotted Philistinism of the British kitchen-maid. Would that there had been, in my seat, to listen sympathetically, instead of me— my eminent predecessor. Among other profound truths, this artist explained with overwhelming eloquence, and at great length, how the outer leaves of lettuces, celery, and the like imbibe from the sun and the life-giving air a higher flavour and a finer energy than those which are shrouded within; but though, Cassandra-like, he everlastingly warned and adjured, the infatuated young woman in question would, under some foolish pretext of cleanliness or tidiness or immemorial custom, keep on trimming

and maiming their vegetables in spite of him. Somewhat after their fashion, the re-caster of Chevy Chase into English, whilst removing the rough border outside and husk, has pared away a little of its native freshness and pith-a little of that spirit and wild fragrance which it had drunk in from the self-sown forests and heather-clad fells of the North. But after all there is not much to complain of, all the best verses, all the happiest images, all the most striking thoughts, are substantially reproduced. There is but one observation, I think, sufficiently important in itself to call for a critical observation-the modern re-adjuster gives way to a momentary impulse of national spite, from which the old warrior-minstrel was wholly free. The spurious lines, I admit, have great force :

And the Lord Maxwell in likewise,

Did with the Douglas die,

Of twenty hundred Scottish spears

Scarce fifty-five did fly;

Of fifteen hundred Englishmen

Went home but fifty-three,

The rest were slain in Chevy Chase,
Under the greenwood tree.'

These lines, I have said, are forcible and full of spirit; but still I am glad that the genuine Northum

brian harper knew better than to fail in respect towards such gallant adversaries, of whom he had already said,—

'Hardier men, nor of heart nor of hand,

Were not in Christianté.'

His closing picture is, I think, at once simpler and more noble in its simplicity than that of his southcountry interpreter. According to him, both parties alike, after struggling on with unflinching courage throughout the long summer day, cease fighting, and that only from utter exhaustion, when the moon rises and the vesper-bell begins to sound:

And now, before I conclude, seeing that I hold a brief for provincial poets in general on this occasion, I should like to ask you a question: Is there no other well-known lay, besides 'The Hunting of the Cheviot,' which started into life among outsiders and refugees?

no other which, though careless of historical facts, yet from the impressive truth of its characters, above all from the noble proportions and intense life of the central one, gives sufficient evidence of a basis of history beneath? no other which, though it dealt with alien traditions, and celebrated the triumphs of a clan beaten and dispossessed by Sparta, stirred, nevertheless, the heart of a Spartan Sir Philip Sidney like a trumpet? Under his auspices it insinuated itself gradually into every corner of the land-into the metropolitan cities and the remotest colonies alike. Its provincialism sloughed itself away as the serpent sloughs its skin: it became national, it became a bond of union, it became a kind of Bible to all who spoke any one of the numberless dialects of Hellas. And now this old Æolic ballad, which began its career as the Hellenic Chevy Chase of some obscure Smyrniote rhapsodist or rhapsodists, stands forth to endless generations as the poem of the world. I can easily imagine the disgust of the fashionable Court minstrels, from Argos and Mycena and Corinth and Lacedæmon, who thought it a stretch of condescension when they attended the festivals of meaner states, at their unexpected reception. They came to see and to conquer; but the beautiful maidens of Delos and the other Ægean isles