ber
others in outside branches like the _Chevalier as Deux Espees_. But
though a French critic has detected something shocking in _Le
Chevalier a la Charette_, it requires curious consideration to follow
him.

[Sidenote: _The Graal._]

The part which the Holy Graal plays in the legend generally is not the
least curious or interesting feature of the whole. As has been already
said more than once, it makes no figure at all in the earliest
versions: and it is consistent with this, as well as with the general
theory and procedure of romance, that when it does appear the
development of the part played by it is conducted on two more or less
independent lines, which, however, the later compilers at least do not
seem to think mutually exclusive. With the usual reserves as to the
impossibility of pronouncing with certainty on the exact order of the
additions to this wonderful structure of legend, it may be said to be
probable, on all available considerations of literary probability,
that of the two versions of the Graal story--that in which Percival is
the hero of the Quest, and that in which Galahad occupies that
place--the former is the earlier. According to this, which commended
itself especially to the French and German handlers of the story,[58]
the Graal Quest lies very much outside the more intimate concerns of
the Arthurian court and the realm of Britain. Indeed, in the latest
and perhaps greatest of this school, Wolfram von Eschenbach (_v._
chap. vi.), the story wanders off into uttermost isles of fancy, quite
remote from the proper Arthurian centres. It may perhaps be conceded
that this development is in more strict accordance with what we may
suppose and can partly perceive to have been the original and almost
purely mystical conception of the Graal as entertained by Robert de
Borron, or another--the conception in which all earthly, even wedded,
love is of the nature of sin, and according to which the perfect
knight is only an armed monk, converting the heathen and resisting the
temptations of the devil, the world, and more particularly the flesh;
diversifying his wars and preachings only or mainly by long mystical
visions of sacred history as it presented itself to mediaeval
imagination. It is true that the genius of Wolfram has not a little
coloured and warmed this chilly ideal: but the story is still
conducted rather afar from general human interest, and very far off
indeed from the special interests of Arthur.