whole which deals more or less distinctly with a
single subject) is constituted. Here again we find a "difference" of
the poems in the strict logical sense. The total mass of the Arthurian
story may be, though more probably it is not, as large as that of the
Charlemagne romances, and it may well seem to some of superior
literary interest. But from its very nature, perhaps from the very
nature of its excellence, it lacks this special feature of the
_chansons de geste_. Arthur may or may not be a greater figure in
himself than Charlemagne; but when the genius of Map (or of some one
else) had hit upon the real knotting and unknotting of the story--the
connection of the frailty of Guinevere with the Quest for the
Grail--complete developments of the fates of minor heroes, elaborate
closings of minor incidents, became futile. Endless stories could be
keyed or geared on to different parts of the main legend: there might
be a Tristan-saga, a Palomides-saga, a Gawain-saga, episodes of Balin
or of Beaumains, incidents of the fate of the damsel of Astolat or the
resipiscence of Geraint. But the central interest was too artistically
complete to allow any of these to occupy very much independent space.

[Sidenote: _Instances._]

In our present subject, on the other hand, even Charlemagne's life is
less the object of the story than the history of France; and enormous
as the falsification of that history may seem to modern criticism, the
writers always in a certain sense remembered that they were
historians. When an interesting and important personality presented
itself, it was their duty to follow it out to the end, to fill up the
gaps of forerunners, to round it off and shade it in.[33] Thus it
happens that the _geste_ or saga of _Guillaume d'Orange_--which is
itself not the whole of the great _geste_ of Garin de Montglane--occupies
eighteen separate poems, some of them of great length; that the
crusading series, beginning no doubt in a simple historical poem,
which was extended and "cycled," has seven, the Lorraine group five;
while in the extraordinary monument of industry and enthusiasm which
for some eight hundred pages M. Leon Gautier has devoted to the king's
_geste_, twenty-seven different _chansons_ are more or less
abstracted. Several others might have been added here if M. Gautier
had laid down less strict rules of exclusion against mere _romans
d'aventures_ subsequently tied on, like the above-mentioned outlying
romance