. The Open court. ll-known attempt toput them into permanent literary form was made by Geoffrey ofMonmouth, the chronicler who came from that same Anglo-Welshborderland to which Arthur belonged. In his Historia and hisMerlin, in 1136-39, he set down some of the Round Table stories,though he made no mention of either Tristram or Lancelot, who arefar more important figures in the romances than Arthur 1155 Wace, the Norman poet, a native of the island of Jer-sey, translated Geoffreys Historia into French verse, and madesome additions to it, but supplied no new characters. The tale o
. The Open court. ll-known attempt toput them into permanent literary form was made by Geoffrey ofMonmouth, the chronicler who came from that same Anglo-Welshborderland to which Arthur belonged. In his Historia and hisMerlin, in 1136-39, he set down some of the Round Table stories,though he made no mention of either Tristram or Lancelot, who arefar more important figures in the romances than Arthur 1155 Wace, the Norman poet, a native of the island of Jer-sey, translated Geoffreys Historia into French verse, and madesome additions to it, but supplied no new characters. The tale ofTristram, or Tristan, appears to have been first put into perma- PARSIFAL. 131 nent form about 1160, by Lnc de Gast, a minstrel of French ances-tty but of English birth, who lived near Salisbury. Closely following- these early romancers came a far greaterone, for whom they merely prepared the way, and who may beregarded as the chief founder of Arthurian literature and indeed ofthe whole school of British IsoLT Playing the Harp. (Illustration of a manuscript of the fifteenth century, preserved in the National Library of Paris.) This was Walter Map. His name is not as familiar as it shouldbe to the world. Historians have neglected him, though scarcelyany attention they might have paid could have been too great for 132 THE OPEN_COURT. his desert. Tennyson has given us a suggestive and engagingsketch of him in his Becket, but it is shadowy and we shall go far elsewhere before we find more about , historian, poet, romancer, philosopher, wit, diplomat, jurist,theologian, reformer—he was a veritable Admirable Crichton of histime, and stood second to no other English subject in the time ofHenry 11. His birthplace is unknown, though it was in Hereford-shire or Gloucestershire, in the Anglo-Welsh borderland, so thatin his youth he lived in an atmosphere of Arthurian folk-lore. Inthe later years of his life he was Archdeacon of Oxford, and therehe br
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