_Note to Third Edition._--Since the second edition was published M. Gaston Paris has sketched in _Romania_ and summarised in his _Manuel_, but has not developed in book form, a view of the Arthurian romances different from his father's and from that given in the text. In this view the importance of 'Celtic' originals is much increased, and that of Geoffrey diminished, Walter Map disappears almost entirely to make room for divers unknown French trouveres, the order of composition is altered, and on the whole a lower estimate is formed of the literary value of the cycle. The 'Celtic' view has also been maintained in a book of much learning and value, _Studies on the Legend of the Holy Grail_ (London, 1888), by Mr. Alfred Nutt. I have not attempted to incorporate or to combat these views in the text for two reasons, partly because they will most probably be superseded by others, and partly because the evidence does not seem to me sufficient to establish any of them certainly. But having given some years to comparative literary criticism in different languages and periods, I think I may be entitled to give a somewhat decided opinion against the 'Celtic' theory, and in favour of that which assigns the special characteristics of the Arthurian cycle and all but a very small part of its structure of incident to the literary imagination of the trouveres, French and English, of the twelfth century. And I may add that as a whole it seems to me quite the greatest literary creation of the Middle Ages, except the _Divina Commedia_, though of course it has the necessary inferiority of a collection by a great number of different hands to a work of individual genius. FOOTNOTES: [51] Nennius, a Breton monk of the ninth century, has left a brief Latin Chronicle in which is the earliest authentic account of the Legend of Arthur. Geoffrey of Monmouth, _circa_ 1140, produced a _Historia Britonum_, avowedly based on a book brought from Britanny by Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford. No trace of this book, unless it be Nennius, can be found. _See note at end of chapter._ [52] Department of Seine-et-Marne, near Fontainebleau. [53] Map as a person belongs rather to English than to French history. He lived in the last three quarters of the twelfth century.