e a lover of Old French literature as the
elder M. Paris, and which continue to be invisible to the far inferior
gifts and knowledge, but if I may dare to say so, the equal good will
and the not inconsiderable critical experience, of the present
historian.

Now with large parts of this matter we have, fortunately enough, nothing
to do, and the actual authorship of the great Arthurian conception,
namely, the interweaving of the Graal story on the one hand and the
loves of Lancelot and Guinevere on the other, with the Geoffrey of
Monmouth matter, concerns us hardly at all. But some have gone even
further than has been yet hinted in the exaltation of Chrestien. They
have discovered in him--"him-by-himself-him"--as the author of his
actual extant works and not as putative author of the real Arthuriad,
not merely a pattern example of the court _trouvere_--as much as this,
or nearly as much, has been admitted here--but almost the inventor of
romance and even of something very like novel, a kind of mediaeval
Scott-Bulwer-Meredith, equally great at adventure, fashion, and
character-analysis; subject only, and that not much, to the limitations
of the time. In fact, if I do not do some of these panegyrists
injustice, we ought to have a fancy bust of Chrestien, with the titles
of his works gracefully inscribed on the pedestal, as a frontispiece to
this book, if not even a full-length statue, robed like a small St.
Ursula, and like her in Memling's presentation at Bruges, sheltering in
its ample folds the child-like figures of future French novelists and
romancers, from the author of _Aucassin et Nicolette_ to M. Anatole
France.

Again, some fifty years of more or less critical reading of novels of
all ages and more than one or two languages, combined with nearly forty
years reading of Chrestien himself and a passion for Old French, leave
the present writer quite unable to rise to this beatific vision. But let
us, before saying any more what Chrestien could or could not do, see, in
the usual cold-blooded way, what he _did_.

[Sidenote: His unquestioned work.]

The works attributed to this very differently, though never
unfavourably, estimated tale-teller--at least those which concern
us--are _Percevale le Gallois_, _Le Chevalier a[22] la Charette_, _Le
Chevalier au Lyon_, _Erec et Enide_, _Cliges_, and a much shorter
_Guillaume d'Angleterre_. This last has nothing to do with the Conqueror
(though the title has naturally deceiv