Of the far greater story of which _Tristram_ is a mere episode and hardly even that--a chantry or out-lying chapel of the great cathedral--the Arthurian Legend, the earlier English versions, or rather the earlier versions in English, are, as has been said, not only fragmentary but disappointing. There is nothing in the least strange in this, even though (as the present writer, who can speak with indifferent knowledge, still firmly holds) the conception of the story itself in its greatest and unifying stage is probably if not certainly English. The original sources of the story of Arthur are no doubt Celtic; they give themselves out as being so, and there is absolutely no critical reason for disbelieving them. But in these earlier forms--the authority of the most learned Celticists who have any literary gift and any appreciation of evidence is decisive on this point--not only are the most characteristic unifying features--the Graal story and the love of Lancelot and Guinevere--completely wanting, but _the_ great stroke of genius--the connection of these two and the subordination of all minor legends as to the dim national hero, Arthur, with those about him--is more conspicuously wanting still. Whether it was the Englishman Walter Map, the Norman Robert de Borron, or the Frenchman Chrestien de Troyes, to whom this flash of illumination came, has never been proved--will pretty certainly now never be proved. M. Gaston Paris failed to do it; and it is exceedingly unlikely that, where he failed, any one else will succeed, unless the thrice and thirty times sifted libraries of Europe yield some quite unexpected windfall. In the works commonly attributed to Chrestien, all of which are well known to the present writer, there is no sign of his having been able to conceive this, though he is a delightful romancer. Robert is a mere shadow; and his attributed works, _as_ his works, are shadows too, though they are interesting enough in themselves. Walter not only has the greatest amount of traditional attribution, but is the undoubted author of _De Nugis Curialium_. And the author of _De Nugis Curialium_, different as it is from the Arthurian story, _could_ have finally divined the latter.