ance is good enough, and would have made
an interesting chapter in the vast working up of the Percevale story
which Wolfram probably had in his mind.

[Footnote 119: Complete works. Ed. Lachmann. Berlin, 1838. _Parzival
und Titurel._ 2 vols. Ed. Bartsch. Leipzig, 1870.]

[Sidenote: Willehalm.]

_Willehalm_, on the other hand, is not only in form but in substance a
following of the French, and of no less a French poem than the _Battle
of Aliscans_, which has been so fully dealt with above. It is
interesting to compare advocates of the two, and see how German
critics usually extol the improvements made by the German poet, while
the French sneer at his preachments and waterings-down. But we need
say nothing more than that if Wolfram's fame rested on _Willehalm_,
the notice of him here would probably not go beyond a couple of lines.

[Sidenote: Parzival.]

_Parzival_, however, is a very different matter. It has of late years
received adventitious note from the fact of its selection by Wagner as
a libretto; but it did not need this, and it was the admiration of
every fit reader long before the opera appeared. The Percevale story,
it may be remembered, lies somewhat outside of the main Arthurian
legend, which, however, had hardly taken full form when Wolfram wrote.
It has been strongly fought for by the Celticists as traceable
originally to the Welsh legend of Peredur; but it is to be observed
that neither in this form nor in the English version (which figures
among the Thornton Romances) does the Graal make any figure. In the
huge poem, made huger by continuators, of Chrestien de Troyes,
Percival becomes a Graal-seeker; and on the whole it would appear
that, as observed before, he in point of time anticipates Galahad and
the story which works the Graal thoroughly into the main Arthurian
tale. According to Wolfram (but this is a romantic commonplace),
Chrestien was culpably remiss in telling the story, and his
deficiencies had to be made up by a certain Provencal named Kyot.
Unfortunately there are no traces elsewhere of any such person, or of
any version, in Provencal or otherwise, between Chrestien's and
Wolfram's. The two, however, stand far enough apart to have admitted
of more than one intermediary; or rather no number of intermediaries
could really have bridged the chasm, which is one of spirit rather
than of matter. In _Percevale le Gallois_, though the Graal exists,
and though the adventures are rather more on t