Lionel's Name and Title 117 



king despoiled, and their territory appropriated, by the vassals o£ 

 a French king; while, looking to the future, as in the romance 

 the whole of Gaul, and not merely an individual fief, falls under 

 the sway of the son (still an infant when the story opens) of 

 a dispossessed lord, so, it may be inferred, when chivalry has 

 done its perfect work, will this infant possess a heritage in the 

 fair lands of France. The analogy seems to fail in one point, 

 it is true ; for who is the Lancelot at whose hands Lionel is to 

 receive his appanage? But we do not expect, in these smiling 

 forecasts, the strictest correspondence in every detail. The 

 Lionel of romance is brave even to f oolhardiness^*' ; and he is 

 represented as consumed with grief at the wrong that has been 

 done to his father and himself.^'^ Would not a fond and ambi- 

 tious father trust that his newborn son would thus conduct him- 

 self as he grew toward manhood? 



But what reason have we to suppose that the Lancelot would 

 be thus familiarly known, or that a mere tissue of chivalric imagi- 

 nation would thus influence grave statesmen and ambitious war- 

 riors? As to the former, 'we have the testimony implied in the 

 lines of Chaucer^^ : 



This storie is also trewe, I undertake, 

 As is the book of Launcelot de Lake, 

 That wommen holde in ful gret reverence. 



^^ Romans 3. 65. 



" Romans 3. 61 : 'Ne vaut-il pas mieux mourir a honneur que d'abandon- 

 ner a d'autres son heritage?' As he and his brother come riding to the 

 court of Claudas, in obedience to his summons, they are thus met : 'A leur 

 approche, tous les gens du palais sortent pour les voir. On les regarde 

 avec interet, on pleure, on prie Dieu de les retablir un jour dans leurs 

 honneurs. . . . Lionel avangait la tetc haute, promenant fierement sa 

 vue de tous les cotes de la salle, comme jouvenceau de haut et noble 

 parage' (3. 63-64). When he is about to be made knight, Arthur, who 

 had been sojourning at Dinasdaron, gave rendezvous to his barons, for 

 the feast of Pentecost, at his city of London, for he v^^ished to dub young 

 Lionel of Cannes knight in the presence of his whole court. 'J^rnais il 

 n'y eut une reunion si brillante de barons, de dames, et de demoiselles ; on 

 vint a Londres de toutes les villes non-seulement de la Grande-Bretagne, 

 mais aussi de France, d'Allemagne, et de Lombardie' (4. 209). 



'^ Nun's Priest's Tale 391-3 (B 4401-3). Cf. Squire's Tale 279 (F 287) : 

 No man but Launcelot, and he is deed. 



In Romans 4. 371-3 attention is called to the fact that the Lancelot com- 

 prehends the Galeotto of Dante, mentioned in the episode of Paolo and 



