V. 2735. Two maydens with him thai laft,
That wele war lered of leche-craft.]

A knowlege of medicine feems to have been part of the education of the fair fex in ancient times. See

Memoires fur l'ancienne chevalerie, I, 14, and note 17. In Mort d'Arthur, fir Tristram is put in the ward and keeping of La beale foud, king Anguishes daugh. ter, "because the was a noble furgion." Her namefake, feult aux blanches mains, was equally expert and fuccefsful. See, likewife, the Histoire de Gerard comte de Nevers & de Euriant de Savoye fa mye, T. 1, C.

19, 20.

V. 3111. And thar thai herd a mes in hafte.]

This was ufual :-" he had with him right good chere, and fared of the beft, with pafsing good wine, and had merry reft that night; and on the morrow he heard a maffe, and after dined, &c." (Mort d'Arthur, P. 1, C. 56.) Again: "On the morrow the damofell and fir Beaumains heard maffe, and brake their fast, and fo tooke their leave.” (P. 1, C. 132.)

V. 3471. Hir elder fister ftode hyr by.]

So, doubtlefs, the MS. originally red; the word zonger being writen by a different, and, apparently, lateër, hand, upon an erasure.

Here is, likewise, another mistake, either of the authour or of the translatour. The younger fister, being in fearch of fir Ywain, falls fick, and comes to the fame castle where he and his lion had been cure'd of the wounds they got in their engagement with the steward and his two brothers. Here the stays, to be heal'd of her malady; and, in the mean time, the lord of the castle dispatches a damfel to proceed in the fearch. This R

VOL. III.

damfel goes to the chapel, and meets with Lunet, who tels her of the combat, and fir Ywains wounds; and brings her to the place where fhe had parted with him. The damfel rides foreward, and comes to the castle where he had been heal'd of his wounds; whence, she is inform❜d, he was juft departed. This contradiction has, most likely, arifeën from the inaccuracy of the translatour; and, by the first castle, we should, no doubt, understand that where Ywain fought and flew the giant, before he went to asfift Lunet.

At the end of the work, either the poet or the copyift ads this distich :

"Ywain and Gawayn thus makes endyng:

God grant us al hys der blyfsing. Amen."

Mister Warton, from whatever motive, has been particularly liberal in his extracts from this poem; which he allows to have "fome great outlines of Gothic painting." See his History of English Poetry, III, 109, &c.

LAUNFAL MILES.

The onely ancient copy of this excellent romance, known to be now extant, is contain’d in a manuscript of the Cotton-library, (Caligula A. II.) writen, it would seem, in or about the reign of Henry VI. in which the translatour is, by Tanner, who, most abfurdly, ftiles him "unus regis Arthuri equitum rotundae tabulae," fuppofe'd to have live'd. Two copys are preferve'd, in our own librarys, of the French original,

by Marie de France, a Norman poetess of the thirteenth century; one in the Harleian MS. Num. 978, and the other in the Cotton, Vespafian B. XIV. The latter begins,

"Laventure de un lay;"

the former (being a collection of fuch pieceës) "Laventure dun autre lai."

The Engleish poem, which, by the way, is much enlarge'd, containing a furplus of near three hundred lines, appears to have been printed under the name of “Sir Lambwell;" being license'd, in the register of the stationers-company, to John Kynge, in 1558, and exprefsly mention'd in Lanehams "Letter, whearin part of the entertainment unto the queenz majesty at Killingworth castl, 1575, iz fignified."

M. Le Grand has giveën the extract of a Lai de Gruélan, of which, he observes, the subject is precifely the fame with that of Lanval; though the details are alltogether different. See Fabliaux ou contes, A, 92.

V. 1. Be douzty Artours dawes.] Doctor Percy, by mistake, gives it (from Ames?)

"Le douzty Artours dawes;" and fays that it is in his folio MS. P. 60, begining thus,

"Doughty in king Arthures dayes."

V.4. Of a ley that was yfette.] A lay (fuppofe'd to come from the barbarous Latin leudus, which occurs in the epistle of Fortunatus to Gregory of Tours:

“ Barbaros leudos harpå relidebat,”) was what is now call'd a fong or ballad, but generally of the elegiack kind, tender and pathetick, (in French

lai, in German lied, in Saxon leod), which was usually fung to the harp; and of which many inftanceës may be found in the profe Roman de Tristan, 1488, and elfewhere See more of these ancient Breton lays in a note to Emare.

:

V. 5. That hyzt Launval, and hatte yette.] Thus Mary:

"Laventure dun autre lai

Cum ele avient vus cunterai,
Fait fu dun mut gentil vasfal

En Bretans lapelent Lanval.”

V. 8. Kardeuyle.] Thus in the MS. and mister Ellises edition; but read, as afterward, Kardevyle. It is Carlile, in Cumberland, where king Arthur is fable'd to have had a palace and occafional refidence. "On this ryver," fays Frois fart, mistakeing the Tyne for the Esk, "standeth the towne and castell of Carlyel, the whiche fome tyme was kyng Arthurs, and helde his courte there often-tymes." (Engleish translation, 1525, fo. vii, b.) Thus, allfo, in an ancient Scotish romance, furtively printed by Pinkerton :

"In the tyme of Arthur an aunter bytydde,
By the Turne-Wathelan, as the boke telles,
When he to Carlele was comen and conquerour

kydde, &c.”

Two old ballads, upon the fubject of king Arthur, printed in the " Reliques of ancient English poetry," fuppofe his refidence at Carteile; and one of them, in particular, fays,

"At Tearne-Wadling his castle ftands." "Tearne-Wadling," according to the ingenious editour (and which, as he observes, is evidently the Turne-Wathelan of the Scotish poem), " is the name

of a small lake near Hesketh in Cumberland, on the road from Penrith to Carlisle. There is a tradition," he ads, "that an old castle once stood near the lake, the remains of which were not long fince visible :" Tearn, in the dialect of that country, fignifying a small lake, and being ftil in ufe. The tradition is that either the castle, or a great city, was fwallow'd up by the lake, and may be ftil feen, under favorable circumftanceës, at its bottom.

It is Kardoel in the original, and elsewhere Cardueil. The old romance of Merlin calls it "la ville de Cardueil en Galles."

V. 13. Sire Persevall.] Sir Perceval le Galois, or Percival de Gales, was one of the knights of the round table. His adventures form the subject of a French metrical romance, compose'd, in the twelfth century, by Chrestien de Troyes, or, according to others, by a certain Manecier, Mennefier, or Menesfier, and of an Engleifh one, in the fifteenth, by Robert de Thornton. The former, extant in the national library of France, and in that of Berne, is fay'd to contain no less than 60,000 verses; a number, however, which has been reduce'd by others to 20,000, and even to 8,700 and 4,500. It appear'd in prose at Paris, 1530, 8vo. The latter is in the library of Lincoln-cathedral.

V. 14. Syr Gyheryes and fyr Agrafrayn.]

Gaheris (Gueherries, or Guerefches), and Agravaine, furname'd le orgueilleux, were brothers to fir Gawain, and both knights of the round table.

V. 15. And Lancelot du Lake.]

This hero was the fon of Ban, king of Benock, in the marches of Gaul and Little-Britain, and a knight.