Weimar. They shaped tales of knightly adventure, blended with reflection, spiritual suggestion, and a grace of verse that represented the best culture of the court, and did not address itself immediately to the people. Wolfram was a younger son of one of the lower noble Bavarian families settled at Eschenbach, nine miles from Ausbach, in Middle Franconia. He had a poor little home of his own, Wildenberg, but went abroad to seek adventures as a knight, and tell adventures as a poet welcome to great lords, and most welcome to the lavish friend of poets, Hermann of Thüringen, at whose court on the Wartburg he remained twenty years, from 1195 to 1215, in which latter year his "Parzival” was finished. From some passages in his poem it may safely be inferred that he was happily married, and had children. The Landgraf Hermann died in 1216, and was succeeded by Ludwig, husband of St. Elizabeth. He did. not care for the poets. Wolfram departed to his own home, died, and was buried at Eschenbach. Wolfram von Eschenbach was greatest of the German poets of his time, not for his grace of diction, but for energy and depth and earnestness of thought. The greatest lyric poet at that time in Germany, Walter von der Vogelweide, was among the poets at the court of the Landgraf Hermann in 1204, within the time when Wolfram was there. We cannot ascribe to English writers alone the spiritualising of the Arthur myths when there is Wolfram's "Parzival" drawing from the Arthur legends a noble poem of the striving to bind earthly knighthood to the ever-living God. While Gawain, type of the earthly knight, wins easy praise in love and chivalry, Parzival-Percival-sounds his way on from childhood up, through humble searchings of the spirit, till he is ruler in the kingdom of the Gaul, where he designs that Lohengrin, his elder son, shall be his successor, while Kardeiss, his younger son, has rule over his earthly possessions. But the German romance of Lohengrin was developed only at the end of the thirteenth century, out of the close of Wolfram's "Parzival," by another Bavarian poet. There are fragments also from Wolfram's earlier work on the theme of another spiritual hero Titurel, who, as the purest, truest, humblest of knights, became ruler over the knights of the Graal, and protector of its temple. After Wolfram's death there was also an amplification of his "Titurel" by Albrecht von Scharfenberg.* The King Arthur romances, as we know them now, were the produce of successive generations. We refer here to their first appearance in poetical literature, because we speak of Walter Map, with whose labours the history of their birth is inevitably connected. The harmonious blending of the inventions of Map with the main body of the legends of King Arthur was greatly assisted by the rhymes of the French poet, Chrestien of Troyes. Chrestien of Chrestien of Troyes was born in the reign of Louis VII., probably within the ten years before 1150. Whether he was of the nobles or of the people, courtier or citizen, layman or priest, is not known; for it may be only in poets' homage that he is once or twice called by other singers "bon père Chrestien." It is expressly said that he was then dead, in a poem written soon after the year 1234, Huon de Meri's "Tornoiement Antecrist." It was Chrestien of Troyes who first sang the Romance of Erec and his wandering with the faithful Enid, which reappears in the Geraint of the Mabinogion, and * The best text of Wolfram's "Parzival" and "Titurel" is that edited by Karl Bartsch, in 1870-71, in Franz Pfeiffer's series of "Deutsche Classiker des Mittelalters." They have been translated into modern German by Karl Simrock, in a volume of which there was a fifth edition in 1876. An interesting view of the whole subject will be found in "Die Saga vom Gral, ihre Entwickelung und dichterische Ausbildung in Frankreich und Deutschland im 12 und 13 Jahrhundert. Eine Literatur-historische Untersuchung von Adolf Birch-Hirschfeld ' (Leipzig, 1877). lives again for us, and for all time, in our laureate's “Idylls of the King." It seems to have been also his first song, for in the opening lines of Cliges he begins by describing himself as, “Cil qui fist d'Erec et d'Enide, author also of other pieces which he goes on to name, and which are all lost except "Erec and Enid." The German Minnesinger, Hartmann von Aue, who lived between the years 1170 and 1210, was, in his "Eric der Wunderäre," the first who took that story out of France. His is no servile version, and he may possibly, even probably, have followed a romance in prose which Chrestien had versified, or may have heard from other poets other songs on the same theme. But there is no evidence that Chrestien of Troyes was not, at the outset of his own career, the first creator of the tale of Enid. Nearly at the same time he sang the "Remedia Amoris as the "Comandement d'Ovide," the "Ars Amatoria as the "Ars d'Amors," and reproduced Pelops, Tereus, Philomela, from the Metamorphoses as "le Mors de l'Espaule,” and “La Muance de la Hape et de l'Aronde et del Rossignol." These pieces are lost, and so is Chrestien's romance, “Del Roi Marc et d'Ysalt la Blonde," although there are extant fragments which some hold to be a part of it. Ysaeult, the wife of Mark King of Cornwall, uncle of Tristan, was called la Blonde to distinguish her from Ysaeult the Whitehanded. Chrestien wrote also the "Romance of Cliges," the lady of whose love was married to his uncle. Cliges was the son of the Greek Emperor's son Alexander, who had betaken himself to Arthur's court, and of Sordamours, King Arthur's niece, who had been given to the brave Alexander in marriage. This Cliges has nothing but name in common with the hero of our charming old metrical fabliau of Sir K-VOL. III. 66 Sir Cleges, hereafter to be mentioned. Another romance of Chrestien's is that of King William of England, which is wholly independent of either William the Conqueror or William Rufus, or any William who was ever in the flesh. This William, with his fair and Christian wife, Gratiana, being admonished by a vision to fly from his kingdom, went to live in the woods, and was lost to his subjects. The tale is a poetical romance of the adventures of the king and his fair wife, and of the two children, Lovel and Marin, who were born in a sea-cave; how they were all parted, tried, and reunited. In spirit, the romance is a tale of the triumph of a pious spirit over earthly glory, and in substance it has some relation, perhaps, to our English Isumbras," and some points of resemblance to the German "Kaiser Octavian." Of Chrestien's romance of the "Knight of the Lion," Yvain is hero. This also was, before the year 1204, turned into a German poem by Hartmann von der Aue, whose version of it is his masterpiece. The tale was repeated also in Norse and in Welsh before it became our early English romance of "Ywaine and Gawin." But the tales of Chrestien's which most interest us here are the metrical tale of Lancelot in the "Chevalier de la Charette," and the metrical version of the Graal story in "Percival le Gallois." For the Lancelot romance, he says that he received his material from the Countess of Champagne; and for the Percival he says that he had his material from Philip Count of Flanders. A Flemish scholar, W. J. A. Jonckbloet,* has shown by minute comparison that the material * "Le Chevalier de la Charette" and "Geschiedinis der Middennederlandsche Dichtkunst," quoted in Dr. W. L. Holland's very full account of "Crestien von Troies" (Tübingen, 1854). The extant works of Chrestien of Troyes-" Christian von Troyes sämtliche Werke " -are being collected by Wendelin Foerster, in an edition of which two volumes have appeared, "I. Cliges, Zum ersten Male herausgegeben. Halle, 1884." "II. Der Löwenritter (Yvain) [Chevalier au Lion]. Halle, 1887." given to Chrestien by the Countess of Champagne was unquestionably Map's prose romance of Lancelot; that the one work was distinctly founded on the other, and that the resemblance does not arise from their being based upon some common original. The Arthurian romances were but one symptom of the adolescence of the mind of modern Europe. It was no more under monastic tutelage. It had left school. An occasional swift glance at what is being done and thought abroad is necessary to right understanding of our home affairs. Chanson de Roland. Romance gathered about Charlemagne as about Arthur. The Chanson de Roland, an heroic poem in four thousand and one ten-syllabled lines, tells how Roland-Orlando-bravest of Charlemagne's twelve peers, fell at Roncesvalles, treacherously surrounded by the hosts of King Marsile of Saragossa. Marsile had feigned submission to Charlemagne, and with help from a treacherous peer, Ganelon, induced Charlemagne with his main army to depart for France, leaving Roland at the post of danger. Roland was urged by Oliver to blow his horn, that Charlemagne might come back to the rescue, but he would not till it was too late. This poem, by one calling himself Turold, was probably written at the close of the eleventh century. Oliver was betrothed to Roland's sister. The two Paladins were equally adventurous and brave. Once when they fought together they fought for five days, neither prevailing. Hence our proverb of equivalents, "A Roland for an Oliver." Epoch of Arthurian Romance. Flemish. The Count Philip of Flanders, or of Alsace, who has been mentioned, and who died in 1191, in his enthusiasm for Arthurian romance, had in his pay poets of Artois and other adjacent parts of France, who were to produce for him French songs of the Saint Graal, Ywein, Percival, Galahad, and other heroes, which he then |