was pretty uniform, and, though quite favourable, not extraordinarily
high. He was recognised as a past-master of the verse _roman
d'aventures_ in octosyllabic couplet, who probably took his
heterogeneous materials wherever he found them; "did not invent much"
(as Thackeray says of Smollett), but treated whatever he did treat in a
singularly light and pleasant manner, not indeed free from the somewhat
undistinguished fluency to which this "light and lewed" couplet, as
Chaucer calls it, is liable, and showing no strong grasp either of
character or of plot, but on the whole a very agreeable writer, and a
quite capital example of the better class of _trouvere_, far above the
_improvisatore_ on the one hand and the dull compiler on the other; but
below, if not quite so far below, the definitely poetic poet.

To an opinion something like this the present writer, who formed it long
ago, not at second hand but from independent study of originals, and who
has kept up and extended his acquaintance with Chrestien, still adheres.

Of late, however, as above suggested, "Chrestiens" have gone up in the
market to a surprising extent. Some twenty years ago the late M. Gaston
Paris[21] announced and, with all his distinguished ability and his
great knowledge elaborately supported, his conclusions, that the great
French prose Arthurian romances (which had hitherto been considered by
the best authorities, including his own no less admirable father, M.
Paulin Paris, slightly anterior to the poet of Troyes, and in all
probability the source of part at least of his work) were posterior and
probably derivative. Now this, of itself, would of course to some extent
put up Chrestien's value. But it, and the necessary corollaries from
it, as originality and so forth, by no means exhaust the additional
honours and achievements which have been heaped upon Chrestien by M.
Paris and by others who have followed, more or less accepted, and in
some cases bettered his ascriptions. In the first and principal place,
there has been a tendency, almost general, to dethrone Walter Map from
his old position as the real begetter of the completed Arthurian
romance, and to substitute the Troyan. Then, partly in support, but also
to some extent, I think, independently of this immense ennoblement,
discoveries have been made of gifts and graces in Chrestien himself,
which had entirely escaped the eyes of so excellent a critic, so erudite
a scholar, and so passionat