he outside of the
strictly Arthurian cycle than usual, we are still in close relations
with that cycle, and the general tone and handling are similar (except
in so far as Chrestien is a better _trouvere_ than most) to those of
fifty other poems. In _Parzival_ we are translated into another
country altogether. Arthur appears but seldom, and though the link
with the Round Table is maintained by the appearances of Gawain, who
as often, though not always, plays to Percevale the part of light to
serious hero, here almost only, and here not always, are we in among
"kenned folk." The Graal mountain, Montsalvatsch, is even more in
fairyland than the "enchanted towers of Carbonek"; the magician
Klingschor is a more shadowy person far than Merlin.

"Cundrie la Sorziere
Diu unsueze und doch diu fiere"

is a much more weird personage than Morgane or Nimue, though she may
also be more "unsweet." Part of this unfamiliar effect is no doubt due
to Wolfram's singular fancy for mutilating and torturing his French
names, to his admixture of new characters and adventures, and
especially to the almost entirely new genealogy which he introduces.
In the pedigree, containing nearly seventy names, which will be found
at the end of Bartsch's edition, not a tithe will be familiar to the
reader of the English and French romances; and that reader will
generally find those whom he does know provided with new fathers and
mothers, daughters and wives.

But these would be very small matters if it were not for other
differences, not of administration but of spirit. There may have been
something too much of the attempt to credit Wolfram with anti-dogmatic
views, and with a certain Protestant preference of simple repentance
and amendment to the performance of stated rites and penances. What is
unmistakable is the way in which he lifts the story, now by phrase,
now by verse effect, now by the indefinable magic of sheer poetic
handling, out of ordinary ways into ways that are not ordinary. There
may perhaps be allowed to be a certain want of "architectonic" in him.
He has not made of Parzival and Condwiramurs, of Gawain and Orgeluse,
anything like the complete drama which we find (brought out by the
genius of Malory, but existing before) in the French-English Arthurian
legend. But any one who knows the origins of that legend from _Erec et
Enide_ to _Durmart le Gallois_, and from the _Chevalier au Lyon_ to
the _Chevalier as Deux Espees_, must rec