The legend thus started with the advantages of belonging to the popular literature of the time, and of association through Brons with Christian tradition. Its incidents were varied, and owing to the blending of diverse strains of story vague enough to be plastic. The formal development of the cycle has been traced in the earlier chapters of these studies; that of its ideal conceptions will be found to follow similar lines. Various ethical intentions can be distinguished, and there is not more difference between the versions in the conduct of the story than in the ideals they set forth.
To some readers it may have seemed well nigh sacrilegious to trace that
... vanished Vase of Heaven
That held like Christ’s own Heart an Hin of Blood,
to the magic vessels of pagan deities. In England the Grail-legend is hardly known save in that form which it has assumed in the Queste. This French romance was one of those which Malory embodied in his rifacimento of the Arthurian cycle, and, thanks to Malory, it has become a portion of English speech and thought.[148] In our own days our greatest poet has expressed the quintessence of what is best and purest in the old romance in lines of imperishable beauty. As we follow Sir Galahad by secret shrine and lonely mountain mere until
Ah, blessed vision! Blood of God,
The spirit beats her mortal bars,
As down dark tides the glory slides,
And star-like mingles with the stars.
we are under a spell that may not be resisted. And yet of the two main paths which the legend has trodden that of Galahad is the least fruitful and the least beautiful. Compared with the Perceval Quest in its highest literary embodiment the Galahad Quest is false and antiquated on the ethical side, lifeless on the æsthetic side.
As it first meets us in literature the legend has barely emerged from its pure and simple narrative stage. There is a temptation to exaggerate Chrestien’s skill of conception when speculating how he would have finished his work, but we know enough, probably, to correctly gauge his intentions. It has been said he meant to portray the ideal knight in Perceval. As was formerly the wont of authors he presents his hero in a good light, and he may be credited with a perception of the opportunity afforded him by his subject for placing that hero in positions wherein a knight could best distinguish himself. In so far his work may be accepted as his picture of a worthy knight. But I can discover in it no scheme of a quest after the highest good to be set forth by means of the incidents at his command. Perceval is brave as a matter of course, punctual in obeying the counsels of his mother and of his teachers, Gonemans and the hermit-uncle, unaffectedly repentant when he is convicted of having neglected his religious duties. But it cannot be said that the hermit’s exhortations or the hero’s repentance, confession, and absolution mark, or are intended to mark, a definite stage in a progress towards spiritual perfection. The explanation of the hero’s silence as a consequence of his sin in leaving his mother, shows how little real thought has been bestowed upon the subject. This explanation, whether wholly Chrestien’s, as I am tempted to think, or complacently reproduced from his model, gives the measure of his skill in constructing an allegory. Beyond insistence upon such points (the hero’s docility) as were indicated to him by his model, or, as in the case of his religious opinions, were a matter of course in a work of the time, Chrestien gives Perceval no higher morality, no loftier aims than those of the day. The ideal of chastity, soon to become of such importance in the development of the legend, is nowhere set forth. Perceval, like Gawain, takes full advantage of what bonnes fortunes come in his way. And if the Quest connotes no spiritual ideal, still less does it one of temporal sovereignty. Had Chrestien finished his story he would have made Perceval heal the Maimed King and win his kingdom, but that kingdom would not have been a type of the highest earthly magnificence. We have seen reason to hold that Chrestien made one great change in the story as he found it in his model; he assigns the Fisher-King’s illness to a wound received in battle. This he did, I think, simply with a view to shortening the story by leaving out the whole of the Partinal episode. No mystical conception was floating in his mind. Yet, as we shall see, the shape which he gave to this incident strongly influenced some of the later versions, and gave the hint for the most philosophical motif to be found in the whole cycle.
The immediate continuators of Chrestien lift the legend to no higher level. I incline to think that Gautier, with less skill of narrative and far greater prolixity, yet trod closely in Chrestien’s footsteps. In the love episodes he is as full of charm as the more celebrated poet. The second meeting of Perceval and Blanchefleur is told with that graceful laughing naïveté of which French literature of the period has the secret. But of a plan, an animating conception even such slight traces as Chrestien had introduced into the story are lacking. Here, as in Chrestien, the mysterious talismans themselves in no way help forward the story. Chrestien certainly had the Christian signification of them in his mind, but makes no use of it. The Vessel of the Last Supper, the Spear that pierced Christ’s side might be any magic spear or vessel as far as he is concerned. The original Pagan essence is retained; the name alone is changed.
Thus far had the legend grown when it came into the hands of the author of the Queste. The subject matter had been partly shaped and trimmed by a master of narrative, the connection with Christian tradition had been somewhat accentuated. It was open to the author of the Queste to take the story as it stood, and to read into its incidents a deep symbolical meaning based upon the Christian character of the holy talismans. He preferred to act otherwise. He broke entirely with the traditional framework, dispossessed the original hero, and left not an incident of his model untouched. But his method of proceeding may be likened to a shuffle rather than to a transformation. The incidents reappear in other connection, but do not reveal the author’s plan any more than is the case in the Conte du Graal. The Christian character of the talismans is dwelt upon with almost wearisome iteration, the sacramental act supplies the matter of many and of the finest scenes, and yet the essence of the talismans is unchanged. The Holy Grail, the Cup of the Last Supper, the Sacramental Chalice is still when it appears the magic food-producing vessel of the old Pagan sagas. What is the author’s idea? Undoubtedly to show that the attainment of the highest spiritual good is not a thing of this world; only by renouncing every human desire, only by passing into a land intermediary between this earth and heaven, is the Quest achieved. In the story of the prosecution of that Quest some attempt may be traced at portraying the cardinal virtues and deadly sins by means of the adventures of the questers, and of the innumerable exhortations addressed to them. But no skill is shown in the conduct of this plan, which is carried out chiefly by the introduction of numerous allegorical scenes which are made a peg for lengthy dogmatic and moral expositions. In this respect the author compares unfavourably with Robert de Borron, who shapes his story in full accord with his conception of the Grail itself, a conception deriving directly from the symbolic Christian nature he attributed to it, and who makes even such unpromising incidents as that of the Magic Fisher subserve his guiding idea.[149]
If the author’s way of carrying out his conception cannot be praised, how does it stand with the conception itself? The fact that the Quest is wholly disassociated from this earth at once indicates the standpoint of the romance. The first effect of the Quest’s proclamation is to break up the Table Round, that type of the noblest human society of the day, and its final achievement brings cheer or strengthening to no living man. The successful questers alone in their unhuman realm have any joy of the Grail. The spirit in which they prosecute their quest is best exemplified by Sir Bors. When he comes to the magic tower and is tempted of the maidens, who threaten to cast themselves down and be dashed to pieces unless he yield them his love, he is sorry for them, but unmoved, thinking it better “they lose their souls than he his.” So little had the Christian writer apprehended the signification of Christ’s most profound saying. The character of the principal hero is in consonancy with this aim, wholly remote from the life of man on earth. A shadowy perfection at the outset, he remains a shadowy perfection throughout, a bloodless and unreal creature, as fit when he first appears upon the scene as when he quits it, to accomplish a quest, purposeless, inasmuch as it only removes him from a world in which he has neither part nor share. Such human interest as there is in the story is supplied by Lancelot, who takes over many of the adventures of Perceval or Gawain in the Conte du Graal. In him we note contrition for past sin, strivings after a higher life with which we can sympathise. In fine, such moral teaching as the Queste affords is given us rather by sinful Lancelot than by sinless Galahad.