two insignificant lyrics, the pious romance of "Guillaume d'Angleterre",
and the elaboration of an episode from Ovid's "Metamorphoses" (vi.,
426-674) called "Philomena" by its recent editor (C. de Boer, Paris,
1909). All these are extant and accessible. But since "Guillaume
d'Angleterre" and "Philomena" are not universally attributed to
Chretien, and since they have nothing to do with the Arthurian material,
it seems reasonable to limit the present enterprise to "Erec and Enide",
"Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot".

Professor Foerster, basing his remark upon the best knowledge we possess
of an obscure matter, has called "Erec and Enide" the oldest Arthurian
romance extant. It is not possible to dispute this significant claim,
but let us make it a little more intelligible. Scholarship has shown
that from the early Middle Ages popular tradition was rife in Britain
and Brittany. The existence of these traditions common to the Brythonic
peoples was called to the attention of the literary world by William of
Malmesbury ("Gesta regum Anglorum") and Geoffrey of Monmouth ("Historia
regum Britanniae") in their Latin histories about 1125 and 1137
respectively, and by the Anglo-Norman poet Wace immediately afterward.
Scholars have waged war over the theories of transmission of the
so-called Arthurian material during the centuries which elapsed
between the time of the fabled chieftain's activity in 500 A.D. and
his appearance as a great literary personage in the twelfth century.
Documents are lacking for the dark ages of popular tradition before the
Norman Conquest, and the theorists may work their will. But Arthur and
his knights, as we see them in the earliest French romances, have little
in common with their Celtic prototypes, as we dimly catch sight of them
in Irish, Welsh, and Breton legend. Chretien belonged to a generation
of French poets who rook over a great mass of Celtic folk-lore they
imperfectly understood, and made of what, of course, it had never been
before: the vehicle to carry a rich freight of chivalric customs and
ideals. As an ideal of social conduct, the code of chivalry never
touched the middle and lower classes, but it was the religion of the
aristocracy and of the twelfth-century "honnete homme". Never was
literature in any age closer to the ideals of a social class. So true is
this that it is difficult to determine whether social practices
called forth the literature, or whether, as in the case of the
sev