ith reverence, and foreign
poets complimented him to a high degree by direct translation and by
embroidering upon the themes which he had made popular. The knights made
famous by Chretien soon crossed the frontiers and obtained rights of
citizenship in counties so diverse as Germany, England, Scandinavia,
Holland, Italy, and to a lesser extent in Spain and Portugal. The
inevitable tendency of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to reduce
poetry to prose affected the Arthurian material; vast prose compilations
finally embodied in print the matter formerly expressed in verse, and it
was in this form that the stories were known to later generations until
revived interest in the Middle Ages brought to light the manuscripts in
verse.

Aside from certain episodes of Chretien's romances, the student will be
most interested in the treatment of love as therein portrayed. On this
topic we may hear speaking the man of his time. "Cliges" contains the
body of Chretien's doctrine of love, while Lancelot is his most perfect
lover. His debt to Ovid has not yet been indicated with sufficient
preciseness. An elaborate code to govern sentiment and its expression
was independently developed by the troubadours of Provence in the early
twelfth century. These Provencal ideals of the courtly life were carried
into Northern France partly as the result of a royal marriage in 1137
and of the crusade of 1147, and there by such poets as Chretien they
were gathered up and fused with the Ovidian doctrine into a highly
complicated but perfectly definite statement of the ideal relations of
the sexes. Nowhere in the vulgar tongues can a better statement of these
relations be found than in "Cliges."

So we leave Chretien to speak across the ages for himself and his
generation. He is to be read as a story-teller rather than as a poet,
as a casuist rather than as a philosopher. But when all deductions are
made, his significance as a literary artist and as the founder of a
precious literary tradition distinguishes him from all other poets
of the Latin races between the close of the Empire and the arrival of
Dante.

--W. W. COMFORT.

EREC ET ENIDE [11]

(Vv. 1-26.) The rustic's proverb says that many a thing is despised that
is worth much more than is supposed. Therefore he does well who makes
the most of whatever intelligence he may possess. For he who neglects
this concern may likely omit to say something which would subsequently
give gre