ritable these are Nature's warnings to desist, but they are disregarded; the object of ambition lures the victim on, the seduction of artistic creation, or of a truth seen dancing like a will-o'-wisp, incessantly solicits him; he will not pause-at length he cannot pause, the excitement has become a fever, the flame that warms destroys him madness arrives.

Sad this is, and would be infinitely sad if there were no help for it, if the very glory and splendour of the intellect were necessarily allied to its infirmity and ruin. But it is not so. Men cannot transgress Nature's laws without incurring Nature's penalties. The most perfect digestive apparatus will be ruined by imprudent habits; the most powerful muscular system may be lamed by over-exertion; the most admirable secreting organs will become morbid under over-stimulus; and why are we to expect the complex and delicate nervous mechanism to be overworked with impunity?

Not by reason of diseased nervous centres are men ever pre-eminent in intellectual energy; nor are they liable to become insane by reason of this energy, unless misdirected. They are pre-eminent because God has endowed them with the higher cerebral development, and because this is in healthy activity; when it falls into unhealthy activity, insanity is the result-a result not due to the original strength of the energy, but due to an original defect in the constitution transmitted from parents, or to a defect acquired through neglect of the plainest precepts of healthy living. It is from their weakness that they fall, not because of their strength. One may pity the overtasked man of genius, and sympathise with his imprudence; one may regret that a knowledge of the simpler laws of life and health is not more general; but one cannot draw from the biographies of illustrious men an argument in favour of the notion that genius is allied to insanity. Overwork, and unseemly neglect, kill the meanest as inevitably as the highest. It is a tragedy which is no respecter of persons, and darkens a thousand homes which are never brightened with a ray of genius.

If genius were disease, the greatest

men ought to manifest the most unmistakable signs of it. Yet we do not learn that Sophocles, Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe, and Scott among the poets, or Giotto, Michael Angelo, Raphael, Titian, and Rubens among the painters, or Bacon, Spinoza, and Kart among philosophers, either claim our sorrow for their intellectual eclipse, or our pity for their eccentricities. We are told that men of genius are always eccentric. They are always original, and generally much self-absorbed d; but we believe that there will be found among them very little eccentricity of the kind noticeable in mad people. We have ourselves known a great many people pre-eminent in intellect, and cannot recall one who was remarkable for any such eccentricity; whereas we have known people whose eccentricities were such that their friends generally alluded to them as "half-cracked," yet these people were by no means remarkable for intellectual power.

That it is over-excitement, and disregard of the laws of health, rather than the amount of cerebral power, which causes the insanity of men of genius, may be suspected from the single comparison of Southey and Wordsworth. No one, we suppose, will for an instant question the immeasurable superiority of Wordsworth's genius; yet his long and laborious life was passed without a threat of cerebral disease; whereas poor Southey paid the penalty of overwork. Wordsworth was much in the open air, taking active exercise. Southey lived in his study. The explanation lies there.

There is another error current on the subject of genius, an error which bases its evidence on cases not less equivocal than those brought forward respecting insanity-namely, that men of genius are too absorbed in their pursuits to pay the same scrupulous attention to minor morals and ordinary duties demanded from other men. Here biography offers its treacherous aid, and shows, unhappily, that many men of genius have disregarded minor morals. To this we reply, as before, that many more men of unblemished mediocrity of intellect have shown a greater dis

regard to minor and major morals; whereupon we conclude that there must be some other cause at work, and that the shortcomings of men of genius are referrible simply to their imperfect conscientiousness. Not because they are strong in intellect, but because they are weak in will or conscience, have these men erred. There is no legitimate connection between splendid talents and engagements broken, trust violated, or bills unpaid; but there is a direct connection between weak consciences and these things.

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Genius may prevent a man from becoming rich; it does not prevent his being scrupulously honest. Absorption in ideas, the pursuit of objects not in themselves marketable, must of course limit the income of any man who earns his income by labour of brain; but it does not screen from him the plain facts of his position. If he is so absorbed as not to be perfectly aware that he has not earned the money to pay for the sherry and mutton on his table, he ought to be shut up in an asylum; and if he is aware of it, but disregards it, either because it vexes him, or because his sanguine disposition leads him to believe that the money will be forthcoming somehow," then we must lay the blame on his feeble conscientiousness, not on his intense intellectual absorption. It is true that a concentration of the intellect on any subject indisposes, if it does not unfit, a man for attending closely to many other matters; though one may note in passing, that mathematicians and poets who could find no time to look after the small matters of finance in their own families, found ample time to look after the finance of India, and the means of defraying the National Debt. But granting that genius incapacitates a man from attending to domestic matters, we must still assert that it by no means absolves him from taking care that those matters are properly seen to; he may resign them into other hands, and only be careful that no sophistication misleads his agent. Ghirlandajo bade his brother manage the house; for himself, he would do his utmost to find the money for it by painting. The same principle applies even to

men too poor "to live like gentlemen." It is not imperative on a man to live like a gentleman; only imperative on him to live honestly. If his genius will not procure him the "common necessaries" (which too often include a host of superfluities, and sacrifices to mere show), let him earn those necessaries by some other labour, like other men. Spinoza lived by polishing glasses; and small as the pittance was which this secured him, it was enough for his necessities, and it preserved his independence. When a pension was offered to him if he would dedicate his work to Louis XIV., he declined, "having no intention of dedicating anything to that monarch." It was ascertained after his death that he had sometimes lived on twopencehalfpenny a-day. This was interpreting the necessities very rigidly; and although it is highly probable that had he been an Englishman his "position in society" would not have been very brilliant on those terms, it is certain that he would have troubled himself little about his position in society, finding in philosophy enough to satisfy his soul."

Goldsmith and Johnson are two instructive illustrations of our argument. Goldsmith had more of what is specially called genius than Johnson had; but will any one assert that it was by reason of this advantage that he was so careless of engagements, and so heedless in money matters? will any one assert that Johnson's noble integrity was owing to his intellectual inferiority? The impulsive, hopeful, childlike nature of Goldsmith, makes us love the man, and easily forgive his errors; we know that there was nothing base in him, only a weakness to which we can be charitable; but let us not forget that his errors sprang from his weakness, and were in no sense the necessary consequences of his strength. Neither let us suffer logic to stifle charity; nor let charity confuse our moral judgments. It is not because we see a course of conduct to be sinful that we are to shut the sinner from our hearts; nor because we feel yearnings of pity for the erring, that we are to alter our judgment of the error.

The taste is a

school half-year. genuine one on their part, wholly independent of Mr Tennyson and his fellow-poets, explain it how we will The truth is, that the style of these romances recommends itself at once to the schoolboy mind, healthfully active and energetic; with very little love-making, few of the finer flights of fancy, and no moral reflections, there are plenty of terrific encounters and hard blows. The interest, such as it is, never flags; incident crowds on incident, adventure succeeds adventure; the successful champion disposes of one antagonist just in time to be ready for another-the discomfited knight is either despatched forthwith to make room for some new aspirant, or is healed of his wound with marvellous rapidity by some convenient hermit, and fights as well, or better, than ever. The plot and machinery are of the simplest kind, most intelligible to the schoolboy mind, and appealing strongly to his sympathies, fresh from foot-ball. Everybody runs full tilt at everybody he meets, is the general stage direction. Whether the antagonist be friend or foe by right, is quite a secondary consideration; these kind of questions are generally asked afterwards, being considered rather a waste of precious time beforehand. "It doth them good to feel each other's might." There you have the key-note of Round Table philosophy; and young England thoroughly appreciates it. True, there is a wonderful sameness in the heroes and their achievements; Sir Tristram's performances are precisely like Sir Lancelot's. In the encounters with which almost every page is filled, there is not even the graphic variety of Homer's wounds; commonly, the knight who is worsted. goes "over his horse's croupe;' occasionally, by way of change, we find that his opponent has " gate him by the necke, and pulled him cleane out of his saddle." But to the admiring readers in question this never seems to occur as an objection; sufficient for them that the action of the piece never stands still for an instant; Sir Ban or Sir Bors, or whoever may be the hero of the hour, has no sooner overthrown the

graceful presentations of Sir Lancelot and Sir Galahad, and their companions of the Round Table, which now crowd upon us everywhere in prose and poetry, produce, we very much suspect, upon the minds of the reading public in general, much the same tantalising and ha'f-disappointing effect, as those snatches of tempting scenery which flash upon our eyes at intervals between the cuttings of the railway and the smoke of the engine-informing us of a pleasant and interesting country close at hand, but with which we have no present means of making further acquaintance. For the early English and French romances which contain the story at large are not very easily accessible; the MSS. themselves not to be thought of except by professed antiquarians; the printed editions few and scarce, and their quaint wording and orthography, so charming in the eyes of their true lovers, presenting rather a forbidding front to mere passing acquaintances. Even the most accessible and most readable of all-"the noble and joyous hystorye of the grete conquerour and excellent kyng, Kyng Arthur "-first printed by Caxton, and several times reprinted since with more or less accuracy, had become in all its editions comparatively scarce; and it may fairly be doubted whether the late reprint, with all the advantage of an attractive typography, is likely to become a popular book. Southey spoke indeed quite truly when he said it had a marvellous attraction for boys. It was so in his youthful days; it was so, we can ourselves testify, a generation later, in at least one large public school, when a solitary copy in two disreputable little paper-bound volumes, claiming to belong to " "Walker's British Classics" (even that wretched edition must have been scarce), was passed from hand to hand, and literally read to pieces, at all hours, lawful and unlawful. And the spell works to this day; boys seize upon the volumes still, wherever they fall in their way, and sit absorbed in them as did their forefathers. They will tell you more of Sir Bagdemagus and King Pellinore in a week, than they can of Diomed and Hector at the end of a

knight with the black shield, than he fewtres his spear afresh, and hurles him" straightway at him of the red shield. The "disport" is fast and furious. And when half-a-dozen champions are unhorsed in the space of a single page, it would be unreasonable to expect that each should fall in different fashion.

This kind of repetition, however, vigorous as it is, must be confessed to pall occasionally upon less voracious appetites. One gets tired of reading for ever of" fortemque Gyan, fortemque Cloanthum," and we can readily imagine the disappointment of those gentle and enthusiastic readers, who, with the grand chant of the Laureate or the classic rhyme of Bulwer still in their ears, turn to the volumes of the Mort d'Arthure as their fount of inspiration. The gentle Enid they will not find there. Such passages as the love of the fair maid of Astolat are rare indeed; and even Arthur and Lancelot, like living mortal heroes, lose something of their herohood on more familiar acquaintance. They will hardly be consoled by a succession of chapters recording "how Sir Lamoracke justed with Sir Palomides, and hurt him grievously;" and "how Sir Tristram smote down Sir Sagramore le Desirous and Sir Dodinas le Savage." Yet these tales of chivalry, though they threaten to be wearisome to the general reader when encountered at full length, have a very deep interest both in a literary and an antiquarian point of view; the more so, because now for the first time there appears a general consent as to the real sources of their origin, while they have sprung afresh into the full sunshine of popular favour, after centuries of comparative obscurity, by one of the most remarkable resurrections in the history of fiction. We will endeavour here to lay before our readers some sketch of that great cycle of romance which for ages was the literature par excellence of Christendom, and which has once more become the treasure-house from which poet and painter draw subjects for their pictures, and in which essayists-wearied of the old heathen classics-seek for illustrations and allusions.

The twelfth and thirteenth centu

ries had an Iliad of their own. Like the great classical epic, it reigned undisputed in the literary firmament, and absorbed all minor bards into satellites or imitators. Like that, too, it has outlived the personal fame of its authors. We can no more tell the names of those old bards who first sung of Arthur and his Round Table, than we can be sure at this day whether the Iliad and the Odyssey are the work of one or many. Like the Iliad, these lays had a certain unity; their central personality was the "King of Men;" their episodes, the acts of his knight companions. The resemblance was even more striking in this-that in both, the Great King is not the real hero. Sir Lancelot and Achilles are the peerless knights; and the fatal estrangement between Lancelot and his king works more irretrievable woe than even the wrath of Achilles. But whether the glorious romance of the Greeks sprung forth in full panoply from some one god-like brain or no, we at least have no means of tracing its infancy or its growth. With the Arthurian epos it is quite otherwise. Nearly every stage in its development is open to us. We can trace it, indistinctly but certainly, rolling on from age to age, assimilating and incorporating, from the manners and the taste of each, fresh elements of strength or weakness-ever changing, yet still the same.

On its earliest origin, indeed, considerable learning and research, and very many ingenious conjectures, would appear to have been wasted. Mallet and Percy (and Count de Tressan agrees with them) would trace it to the northern Skalds, who, accompanying the army of Rollo, "the ganger," in his warlike migration southward, carried with them the lays of their own mythology, but replaced the Pagan heroes by Christian kings and warriors. Another theory, originated by the learned Claude Saumaise (Salmasius), and adopted enthusiastically by Warton, ascribes all the germs of romantic fiction to the Saracens or Arabians, and suggests its probable introduction into Europe to the effects of the Crusades; or, according to Warton, to the Arab conquests in Spain; that