By many ways do all the antecedent texts of the Greater Chronicles lead up, in the hands of their editors, to the romance of Lancelot. Therefrom, or therein, all reflect, according to their respective measures, and itself is the great text which goes before the romance of Galahad, as a royal prince may herald the king of all. The prototype of the story in respect of early Graal history is the Book of the Holy Graal, but some of its references have no authority in that document. In comparison with its vast extent, the allusions to the Sacred Vessel are rare and brief. I will take all the necessary points in their order, beginning with two pregnant statements, the first of which is conclusive as to the historical source, for it is said that the Holy Graal was that Dish in which Christ ate the Paschal Lamb with His disciples. But the story is late chronologically in the sequence; it reflected much; its ambition was to include all Arthurian chivalry in its province; and none knew better than the successive authors, who are thought to have welded it into one whole, that the true service of the Sacred Vessel took place at no festival of earthly meats, but at an arch-natural mass. It is haunted therefore with the same idea as we shall find in the Longer Prose Perceval--that what besides it was, the Graal was also a chalice, and it is so described accordingly in one of the later branches. In evidence of this it may be noted that it is apparently the dove's censer in the story of Lancelot which brings the good meat and drink. The second statement occurs in a printed codex, and scholarship, which