o composed those verses on Death in
our vulgar tongue which are publicly read, so elegantly and
so usefully that the subject is laid open clearer than the
light. He also diligently digested into a certain huge
volume a Chronicle from the beginning of the world down to
his own time. But in truth this work was dissipated and
dispersed in such sort that it is nowhere to be found
entire. For it is reported that the said Helinand lent
certain sheets of the said work to one of his familiars, to
wit, Guarin, Lord Bishop of Senlis of good memory, and thus,
whether through forgetfulness or negligence or some other
cause, lost them altogether. From this work, however, as
far as I have been able to find it, I have inserted many
passages in this work of mine own also."

It will thus be seen that about 1209, Helinand became a monk at
Froid-mont, and it is exceedingly improbable that any portion of his
"Chronicle" was written before that date. On the other hand, his
'familiar' Guarin only became Bishop of Senlis in 1214, and died in
1227, (12) so that it is certain Helinand wrote the last part of his
"Chronicle" not later than the last-mentioned year. The limits of time,
therefore, between which the "Chronicle" was written are clearly
circumscribed; and if it is impossible to define the exact year in
which this particular entry was made, it is not, I fancy, beyond the
legitimate bounds of critical conjecture.

On the first page of the Romance, Helinand read that an Angel had
appeared to a certain hermit in Britain and revealed to him the history
of the Holy Graal. In transferring the record of this event to his
"Chronicle", he was compelled by the exigencies of his system, which
required the insertion of every event recorded under some particular
year, to assign a date to the occurrence. A vague "five hundred years
ago" would be likely to suggest itself as an appropriate time at which
the occurrence might be supposed to have taken place; and if he were
writing in 1220, the revelation to the hermit would thus naturally be
relegated to the year 720, the year under which the entry actually
appears. This, of course, is pure guesswork, but the fact remains that
the "Chronicle" was written in or about 1220, and the "Book of the
Graal" not long before it.

The name of the author is nowhere recorded. He may possibly be
referred to in the "Elucidation" prefixed to th