He adopts, most happily, the early, not the late, placing of those with the Romans.

He drops the false Guinevere altogether, which is imperative, that the true one may have no right to plead the incident--though he does not represent Arthur as "blameless." He gives the _roman d'aventures_ side of the Round Table stories, from the great Tristram and Palomides romances through the Beaumains episode downwards, because they are interesting in themselves and lead up to the Graal quest.

He gives that Quest as plentifully because it leads up to the "dolorous death and departing out of this world of them all." How he gives the Lancelot and Guinevere tragedy we shall see presently.

And the catastrophe of the actual "departing" he gives perfectly; with the magnificent final scenes which he has converted, sometimes in almost Shakespearean fashion, by the slightest verbal touches from mediocre verse to splendid prose.

A very remarkable compiler! It is a pity that they did not take him and cut him up in little stars for a light to all his brethren in compiling thereafter.
For he has what no compiler as such can have--because the moment he has it he ceases to be a compiler, and becomes an artist--the sense of _grasp_, the power to put his finger, and to keep it, on the central pulse and nerve of the story.