hrases, though not directly, Lucan. To these must be added
_Athis et Prophilias_ (Porphyrias), or the Siege of Athens, a work which
has been assigned to many authors, and the origin of which is not clear,
though it enjoyed great popularity in the middle ages. The _Protesilaus_
of Hugues de Rotelande is the only other poem of this series worth the
mentioning.

Neither of these two classes of poems possesses the value of the
Chansons as documents for social history. The picture of manners in them
is much more artificial. But the Arthurian romances disclose partially
and at intervals a state of society decidedly more advanced than that of
the Chansons. The _bourgeois_, the country gentleman who is not of full
baronial rank, and other novel personages appear.

* * * * *

_Note to Third Edition._--Since the second edition was published M.
Gaston Paris has sketched in _Romania_ and summarised in his _Manuel_,
but has not developed in book form, a view of the Arthurian romances
different from his father's and from that given in the text. In this
view the importance of 'Celtic' originals is much increased, and that of
Geoffrey diminished, Walter Map disappears almost entirely to make room
for divers unknown French trouveres, the order of composition is
altered, and on the whole a lower estimate is formed of the literary
value of the cycle. The 'Celtic' view has also been maintained in a book
of much learning and value, _Studies on the Legend of the Holy Grail_
(London, 1888), by Mr. Alfred Nutt. I have not attempted to incorporate
or to combat these views in the text for two reasons, partly because
they will most probably be superseded by others, and partly because the
evidence does not seem to me sufficient to establish any of them
certainly. But having given some years to comparative literary criticism
in different languages and periods, I think I may be entitled to give a
somewhat decided opinion against the 'Celtic' theory, and in favour of
that which assigns the special characteristics of the Arthurian cycle
and all but a very small part of its structure of incident to the
literary imagination of the trouveres, French and English, of the
twelfth century. And I may add that as a whole it seems to me quite the
greatest literary creation of the Middle Ages, except the _Divina
Commedia_, though of course it has the necessary inferiority of a
collection by a great number of different hands to a