pt satisfaction is one of the most remarkable
coincidences in literary history. It would seem that the pride of the
Celtic populations in a Celtic hero, aided and abetted by Geoffrey of
Monmouth, who first showed the romantic possibilities of the material,
made of the obscure British chieftain Arthur a world conqueror. Arthur
thus became already in Geoffrey's "Historia regum Britaniae" a conscious
protagonist of Charlemagne and his rival in popularity. This grandiose
conception of Arthur persisted in England, but this conception of the
British chieftain did not interest the French. For Chretien Arthur had
no political significance. He is simply the arbiter of his court in all
affairs of justice and courtesy. Charlemagne's very realistic entourage
of virile and busy barons is replaced by a court of elegant chevaliers
and unemployed ladies. Charlemagne's setting is historical and
geographical; Arthur's setting is ideal and in the air. In the oldest
epic poems we find only God-fearing men and a few self-effacing women;
in the Arthurian romances we meet gentlemen and ladies, more elegant and
seductive than any one in the epic poems, but less fortified by
faith and sense of duty against vice because breathing an enervating
atmosphere of leisure and decadent morally. Though the Church made the
attempt in "Parzival", it could never lay its hands so effectively upon
this Celtic material, because it contained too many elements which
were root and branch inconsistent with the essential teachings of
Christianity. A fleeting comparison of the noble end of Charlemagne's
Peers fighting for their God and their King at Ronceval with the futile
and dilettante careers of Arthur's knights in joust and hunt, will show
better than mere words where the difference lies.

The student of the history of social and moral ideals will find much to
interest him in Chretien's romances. Mediaeval references show that he
was held by his immediate successors, as he is held to-day when fairly
viewed, to have been a master of the art of story-telling. More than any
other single narrative poet, he was taken as a model both in France and
abroad. Professor F. M. Warren has set forth in detail the finer points
in the art of poetry as practised by Chretien and his contemporary
craftsmen (see "Some Features of Style in Early French Narrative Poetry,
1150-1170 in "Modern Philology", iii., 179-209; iii., 513-539; iv.,
655-675). Poets in his own land refer to him w