Walter not only has the greatest amount of traditional attribution, but is the undoubted author of _De Nugis Curialium_.

And the author of _De Nugis Curialium_, different as it is from the Arthurian story, _could_ have finally divined the latter.
But at the time when he wrote, Englishmen, with the rarest exceptions, wrote only in French or Latin; and when they began to write in English, a man of genius, to interpret and improve on him, was not found for a long time.

And the most interesting parts of the Arthurian story are rarely handled at all in such early vernacular versions of it as we have, whether in verse or prose.

Naturally enough, perhaps, it was the fabulous historic connection with British history, and the story of the great British enchanter Merlin, that attracted most attention.

The _Arthour and Merlin_ which is in the Auchinleck MS.; the prose _Merlin_, published by the Early English Text Society; the alliterative Thornton _Morte d'Arthur_, and others, are wont to busy themselves about the antecedents of the real story--about the uninteresting wars of the King himself with Saxons, and Romans, and giants, and rival kings, rather than with the great chivalric triple cord of Round Table, Graal, and Guinevere's fault.