allusion to ‘le fìz à la fille à la femme de Malehot,’[22] which seems to suggest that even at that comparatively early stage the incident had undergone the modification familiar to us in the Prose Lancelot. In the result, I think we shall find that it formed one of the first steps in the development of the Lancelot story.[23]

So far as the evidence of the Ipomedon goes it suggests, if it does not absolutely prove, that at the period when that poem was written there was current a story which ascribed to Lancelot the adventures of the Three Days’ Tournament, in a form which, as might be expected in any early Lancelot version, showed traces of the influence of the Perceval, and which was popularly attributed to Walter Map. Of the versions which we now possess, that of Lanzelet best corresponds to these conditions.

CLIGÉS

But there is another claimant in the field, and one whose right to be considered the original hero of the adventure it would, according to Professor Foerster’s opinion, be sheer impiety to doubt!—the Cligés of Chrétien de Troyes. In the poem of that name the hero makes his first appearance at Arthur’s court at a tournament lasting for four successive days: he wears successively black, green, red, and white armour; and overthrows, on the three first days, Segramor, Lancelot, and Perceval; fighting on the fourth day an undecided combat with Gawain.[24] Professor Foerster, commenting on the Lanzelet,[25] remarks of the tournament episode ‘das Wechseln der Rüstung stammt aus Cligés; and further on[26] affirms that Chrétien ‘sich—im Cligés sicher als ganz selbständig gezeigt hat,’ a statement he repeats on p. cxxviii, and in another place[27] with even more emphasis, ‘Dieser selbe Kristian ist in einem Roman wie Niemand ableugnen kann GANZ SELBSTÄNDIG vorgegangen, im Cligés.’ That is, Professor Foerster asserts, and as emphatically as print will allow him, that Chrétien was entirely independent in Cligés; that the episode of the change of armour is the same in the two poems, and was borrowed by the author of the Lanzelet from Chrétien, and therefore, if words mean anything, that Chrétien invented the story, and that Cligés is the real and original hero of the tale.

Well, if assertion were argument, and a liberal display of large type could settle intricate questions of literary criticism, we might hold the dependence of Lanzelet upon Cligés to be—not proven, no—but determined. But there are some few heretics who suspect that Professor Foerster’s ipse dixit, though imposed with all the weight of a Papal imprimatur, is not really more competent to decide a problem of sources than is that notoriously fallacious engine for the suppression of free investigation, and therefore, more heretico, we will be presumptuous enough to examine the question for ourselves.

So far as the dates of the existing versions are concerned, be it said at once that the Cligés is the older; i.e. it is older than the Ipomedon, the Lanzelet, or the Prose Lancelot; but how it stands with regard to the lost French source of the Lanzelet is not so easily determined. The exact date of the Cligés is not known. It was written after Erec, the translations from Ovid, and the lost Tristan; but before the Charrette and the Yvain, which fall between the years 1164-73. Professor Foerster, in his Introduction to the Charrette,[28] has expressed himself in favour of as late a date as possible for that poem—towards 1170; and since the Perceval, Chrétien’s last work, was written about 1182, we can scarcely place the beginning of his literary career earlier than 1150. If we place the Cligés before 1160, we shall, I think, be ascribing too great an activity to the decade 1150-60, in comparison with 1160-70. It seems more suitable to place the Cligés about 1160; but, as we shall see, the argument is not affected by a few years one way or the other.

The most important factor in the problem, the French source of the Lanzelet, no longer exists,[29] yet it appears certain that the whole question hinges upon the possibility of this, or an analogous French Lancelot story, having been in existence previous to the work of Chrétien de Troyes. It therefore becomes necessary, not only to carefully compare the two versions, that of the Cligés and that of the Lanzelet, but also to inquire as to the source from which the story was originally derived. As we shall see, these two parts of our investigation mutually supplement each other, and in the sum-total present us with a compact and striking body of evidence.

As a first step in the inquiry we will take the Cligés, the Lanzelet, and the Ipomedon (as being anterior to the Lanzelet in its present form), and see if we can discover any traces of a knowledge of Chrétien’s work on the part of the two later writers. The answer will be unhesitatingly in the negative. In neither work is there any reminiscence (with the exception of the episode in question) either in name or incident of the Cligés. As a matter of fact, allusions to this poem are exceptionally rare. Professor Foerster states that there were two German translations, one by Ulrich von Türheim and another by Konrad Fleck, but of these only fragments remain. The Parzival once mentions a Clîas, a knight of the Round Table, and in another place refers to the story of Alexander and Soredamors, but in each case it is doubtful whether the allusion is to Chrétien’s poem.[30] The English ‘Sir Cleges’[31] has no connection whatever with the earlier hero, and Malory’s allusions to a Sir Clegis do not go beyond the mere name, and cannot be identified with either. In my Lancelot studies I have commented upon the indifference