yes.]

As is the case with most of these early writers, little or nothing is
known of Chrestien de Troyes but his name. He lived in the last half of
the twelfth century, he was attached to the courts of Flanders,
Hainault, and Champagne, and he wrote most of his works for the lords of
these fiefs. Besides his Arthurian work he translated Ovid, and wrote
some short poems. Chrestien de Troyes deserves a higher place in
literature than has sometimes been given to him. His versification is so
exceedingly easy and fluent as to appear almost pedestrian at times; and
his _Chevalier a la Charrette_, by which he is perhaps most generally
known, contrasts unfavourably in its prolixity with the nervous and
picturesque prose to which it corresponds. But _Percevale_ and the
_Chevalier au Lyon_ are very charming poems, deeply imbued with the
peculiar characteristics of the cycle--religious mysticism, passionate
gallantry, and refined courtesy of manners. Chrestien de Troyes
undoubtedly contributed not a little to the popularity of the Arthurian
legends. Although, by a singular chance, which has not yet been fully
explained, the originals appear to have been for the most part in
prose, the times were by no means ripe for the general enjoyment of work
in such a form. The reciter was still the general if not the only
publisher, and recitation almost of necessity implied poetical form.
Chrestien did not throw the whole of the work of his contemporaries into
verse, but he did so throw a considerable portion of it. His Arthurian
works consist of _Le Chevalier a la Charrette_, a very close rendering
of an episode of Map's _Lancelot_; _Le Chevalier au Lyon_, resting
probably upon some previous work not now in existence; _Erec et Enide_,
the legend which every English reader knows in Mr. Tennyson's _Enid_,
and which seems to be purely Welsh; _Cliges_, which may be called the
first Roman d'Aventures; and lastly, _Percevale_, a work of vast extent,
continued by successive versifiers to the extent of some fifty thousand
lines, and probably representing in part a work of Robert de Borron,
which has only recently been printed by M. Hucher. _Percevale_ is,
perhaps, the best example of Chrestien's fashion of composition. The
work of Borron is very short, amounting in all to some ninety pages in
the reprint. The _Percevale le Gallois_ of Chrestien and his
continuators, on the other hand, contains, as has been said, more than
forty-five thousand verse