The execrable Lonelich or Lovelich, who preceded Malory a little, had of course predecessors in handling the other parts of the Graal story.

But the crown and flower of the whole--the inspiration which connected the Round Table and the Graal and the love of Lancelot and Guinevere--though, so far as the present writer's reading and opinion are of any weight, the recent attempts to deprive the Englishman, Walter Map, of the honour of conceiving it are of no force--seems to have waited till the fifteenth century--that is to say the last part of three hundred years--before Englishmen took it up.

Most popular of all perhaps, on the principle that in novels the flock "likes the savour of fresh grass," seem to have been the pure _romans d'aventures_--quite unconnected or nearly so with each other or with any of the larger cycles.

Those adventures of particular heroes have sometimes a sort of Arthurian link, but they really have no more to do with the main Arthurian story than if Arthur were not.
For the present purpose, however, filiation, origin, and such-like things are of much less importance than the actual stories that get themselves told to satisfy that demand which in due time is to produce the supply of the novel.

Of these the two oldest, as regards the actual forms in which we have them, are capital examples of the more and less original handling of "common-form" stories or motives.