re et
Blanchefleur_,[115] the capital example of a pure love-story in which
love triumphs over luck and fate, and differences of nation and
religion. Of this only fragments survive, and the before-mentioned
first German version of the Tristan story by Eilhart von Oberge exists
only in a much altered form of the fifteenth century. But both, as
well as the work in lyric and narrative of Heinrich von Veldeke, date
well within the twelfth century, and the earliest of them may not be
much younger than its middle. It was Heinrich who seems to have been
the chief master in form of the greater poets mentioned above, and now
to be noticed as far as it is possible to us. We do not know,
personally speaking, very much about them, though the endless industry
of their commentators, availing itself of not a little sheer
guesswork, has succeeded in spinning various stories concerning them;
and the curious incident of the _Wartburg-krieg_ or minstrels'
tournament, though reported much later, very likely has sound
traditional foundations. But it is not very necessary to believe, for
instance, that Gottfried von Strasburg makes an attack on Wolfram von
Eschenbach. And generally the best attitude is that of an editor of
the said Gottfried (who himself rather fails to reck his own salutary
rede by proceeding to redistribute the ordinary attribution of poems),
"Ich bekenne dass ich in diesen Dingen skeptischer Natur bin."

[Footnote 115: Found in every language, but _originally_ French.]

[Sidenote: _Gottfried of Strasburg._]

If, however, even Gottfried's own authorship of the _Tristan_[116] is
rather a matter of extremely probable inference than of certain
knowledge, and if the lives of most of the poets are very little
known, the poems themselves are fortunately there, for every one who
chooses to read and to form his own opinion about them. The palm for
work of magnitude in every sense belongs to Gottfried's _Tristan_ and
to Wolfram's _Parzival_, and as it happens--as it so often
happens--the contrasts of these two works are of the most striking and
interesting character. The Tristram story, as has been said above,
despite its extreme popularity and the abiding hold which it has
exercised on poets as well as readers, is on the whole of a lower and
coarser kind than the great central Arthurian legend. The philtre,
though it supplies a certain excuse for the lovers, degrades the
purely romantic character of their affection in more than