The fate and metaphysical aid that determine the relations of Tristram and Iseult; the unconscious incest of Arthur and Margause with its Greek-tragic consequence; the unrewarded fidelity of Palomides, and (an early instance of the soon to be triumphant allegory) his fruitless chase of the Beast Glatissant; all these are matters in point.

But of course the main nursery of such things is the Lancelot-and-Guinevere story itself.

Nobody has yet made Guinevere a person--nobody but Shakespeare could have done so perhaps, though Shakespeare's Guinevere would probably have been the greatest woman in all art.

But Malory has not been the least successful with her: and of Lancelot he has made, if only in study, one of the great characters of that fictitious world which is so much truer than the real.

And let no one say that we are reading Tennyson or any one else into Malory.