Note 23 — I

Professor Foerster’s remark (Charrette, Introduction, p. xlvi), that Hugo would, not improbably, take with him a copy of the last romance which had created a popular furore, is one of those gratuitous assumptions which, to the learned professor, assume the virtue of facts, but which cannot be admitted, by any serious critic, as a contribution to the argument. Professor Foerster seems to imagine a twelfth century ‘Mudie’ with a ‘run’ on the latest novel! If the source of the Lanzelet had created in any sense a furore, it would scarcely have disappeared so completely. Considering the slowness of reproduction in those days, it is at least as likely that the book was an old and valued favourite; but as I said above, such hypotheses do not advance the question one way or the other.