Frenchman in the wide sense; so (if he
existed) was Robert de Borron, another of them. The very phrase so
familiar to readers of Malory, "the French book," comes to the
assistance of the claim.

And yet, as is the case with some other claims which look irresistible
at first sight, the strength of this shrinks and dwindles remarkably
when it comes to be examined. One consideration is by itself
sufficient, not indeed totally to destroy it, but to make a terrible
abatement in its cogency; and this is, that if the great Arthurian
romances, written between the middle and end of the twelfth century,
were written in French, it was chiefly because they could not have
been written in any other tongue. Not only was no other language
generally intelligible to that public of knights and ladies to which
they were addressed; not only was no other vernacular language
generally known to European men of letters, but no such vernacular,
except Provencal, had attained to anything like the perfection
necessary to make it a convenient vehicle. Whatever the nationality of
the writer or writers, it was more likely that he or they would write
in French than in any other language. And as a matter of fact we see
that the third of the great national claimants was an Englishman,
while it is not certain that Robert de Borron was not an English
subject. Nor is it yet formally determined whether Chrestien himself,
in those parts of his work which are specially Arthurian, had not Map
or some one else before him as an authority.

[Sidenote: _The theory of general literary growth._]

The last theory, that the Legend may be almost if not quite
sufficiently accounted for as a legitimate descendant of previous
literature, classical and other (including Oriental sources), has been
the least general favourite. As originally started, or at least
introduced into English literary history, by Warton, it suffered
rather unfairly from some defects of its author. Warton's _History of
English Poetry_ marks, and to some extent helped to produce, an
immense change for the better in the study of English literature: and
he deserved the contemptuous remarks of some later critics as little
as he did the savage attacks of the half-lunatic Ritson. But he was
rather indolent; his knowledge, though wide, was very desultory and
full of scraps and gaps; and, like others in his century, he was much
too fond of hypothesis without hypostasis, of supposition without
substance.