The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory

By George Saintsbury

[Pg 22]

CHAPTER II.

CHANSONS DE GESTE.^[15]

European literature in 1100. Late discovery of the chansons. Their age and history. Their distinguishing character. Mistakes about them. Their isolation and origin. Their metrical form. Their scheme of matter. The character of Charlemagne. Other characters and characteristics. Realist quality. Volume and age of the chansons. Twelfth century. Thirteenth century. Fourteenth, and later. Chansons in print. Language: oc and oïl. Italian. Diffusion of the chansons. Their authorship and publication. Their performance. Hearing, not reading, the object. Effect on prosody. The jongleurs.[Pg xiv] Jongleresses, &c. Singularity of the chansons. Their charm. Peculiarity of the geste system. Instances. Summary of the geste of William of Orange. And first of the Couronnement Loys. Comments on the Couronnement. William of Orange. The earlier poems of the cycle. The Charroi de Nîmes. The Prise d'Orange. The story of Vivien. Aliscans. The end of the story. Renouart. Some other chansons. Final remarks on them

When we turn from Latin and consider the condition of the vernacular tongues in the year 1100, there is[Pg 23] hardly more than one country in Europe where we find them producing anything that can be called literature. In England Anglo-Saxon, if not exactly dead, is dying, and has for more than a century ceased to produce anything of distinctly literary attraction; and English, even the earliest "middle" English, is scarcely yet born, is certainly far from being in a condition for literary use. The last echoes of the older and more original Icelandic poetry are dying away, and the great product of Icelandic prose, the Saga, still volitat per ora virum, without taking a concrete literary form. It is in the highest degree uncertain whether anything properly to be called Spanish or Italian exists at all—anything but dialects of the lingua rustica showing traces of what Spanish and Italian are to be; though the originals of the great Poema del Cid cannot be far off. German is in something the same trance between[Pg 24] its "Old" and its "Middle" state as is English. Only in France, and in both the great divisions of French speech, is vernacular literature active. The northern tongue, the langue d'oïl, shows us—in actually known existence, or by reasonable inference that it existed—the national epic or chanson de geste; the southern, or langue d'oc, gives us the Provençal lyric. The latter will receive treatment later, the former must be dealt with at once.

It is rather curious that while the chansons de geste are, after Anglo-Saxon and Icelandic poetry, the oldest elaborate example of verse in the modern vernaculars; while they exhibit a character, not indeed one of the widest in range or most engaging in quality, but individual, interesting, intense as few others; while they are entirely the property of one nation, and that a nation specially proud of its literary achievements,—they were almost the last division of European literature to become in any degree properly known. In so far as they were known at all, until within the present century, the knowledge was based almost entirely on later adaptations in verse, and still later in prose; while—the most curious point of all—they were not warmly welcomed by the French even after their discovery, and cannot yet be said to have been taken to the heart of the nation, even to the limited extent to which the Arthurian romances have been taken to the heart of England, much less to that in which the old, but much less old, ballads of England, Scotland, Germany, and Spain have for periods of varying length been welcomed in their respective countries. To dis[Pg 25]cuss the reason of this at length would lead us out of our present subject; but it is a fact, and a very curious fact.

The romances of Charlemagne, or, to employ their more technical designation, the chansons de geste, form a large, a remarkably homogeneous, and a well-separated body of compositions. These, as far as can be decided, date in time from the eleventh to the thirteenth century, with a few belated representatives in the fourteenth; but scarcely, as far as probability shows, with any older members in the tenth. Very little attention of any kind was paid to them, till some seventy years ago, an English scholar, Their age and
history.Conybeare, known for his services to our own early literature, following the example of another scholar, Tyrwhitt, still earlier and more distinguished, had drawn attention to the merit and interest of, as it happens, the oldest and most remarkable of all. This was the Chanson de Roland, which, in this oldest form, exists only in one of the MSS. of the Bodleian Library at Oxford. But they very soon received the care of M. Paulin Paris, the most indefatigable student that in a century of examination of the older European literature any European country has produced, and after more than half a century of enthusiastic resuscitation by M. Paris, by his son M. Gaston, and by others, the whole body of them has been thoroughly overhauled and put at the disposal of those who do not care to read the original, in the four volumes of the remodelled edition of M. Léon Gautier's Epopées Françaises, while perhaps a[Pg 26] majority of the actual texts are in print. This is as well, for though a certain monotony is always charged against the chansons de geste[16] by those who do not love them, and may be admitted to some extent even by those who do, there are few which have not a more or less distinct character of their own; and even the generic character is not properly to be perceived until a considerable number have been studied.

The old habit of reading this division of romance in late and travestied versions naturally and necessarily obscured the curious traits of community in form and matter that belong to it, and indeed distinguish it from almost all other departments of literature of the imaginative kind. Its members are frequently spoken of as "the Charlemagne Romances"; and, as a matter of fact, most of them do come into connection with the great prince of the second race in one way or another. Yet Bodel's phrase of matière de France[17] is happier. For they are all still more directly connected with French history,[Pg 27] seen through a romantic lens; and even the late and half-burlesque Hugues Capet, even the extremely interesting and partly contemporary set on the Crusades, as well as such "little gestes" as that of the Lorrainers, Garin le Loherain and the rest, and the three "great gestes" of the king, of the southern hero William of Orange (sometimes called the geste of Montglane), and of the family of Doon de Mayence, arrange themselves with no difficulty under this more general heading. And the chanson de geste proper, as Frenchmen are entitled to boast, never quite deserts this matière de France. It is always the Gesta Francorum at home, or the Gesta Dei per Francos in the East, that supply the themes. When this subject or group of subjects palled, the very form of the chanson de geste was lost. It was not applied to other things;[18] it grew obsolete with that which it had helped to make popular. Some of the material—Huon of Bordeaux, the Four Sons of Aymon, and others—retained a certain vogue in forms quite different, and gave later ages the inexact and bastard notion of "Charlemagne Romance" which has been referred to. But the chanson de geste itself was never, so to speak, "half-known"—except to a very few antiquaries. After its three centuries of flourishing, first alone, then with the other two "matters," it retired altogether, and made its reappearance only after four centuries had passed away.

This fact or set of facts has made the actual nature of the original Charlemagne Romances the subject of[Pg 28] much mistake and misstatement on the part of general historians of literature. The widely read and generally accurate Dunlop knew nothing whatever about them, except in early printed versions representing their very latest form, and in the hopelessly travestied eighteenth-century Bibliothèque des Romans of the Comte de Tressan. He therefore assigned to them[19] a position altogether inferior to their real importance, and actually apologised for the writers, in that, coming after the Arthurian historians, they were compelled to imitation. As a matter of fact, it is probable that all the most striking and original chansons de geste, certainly all those of the best period, were in existence before a single one of the great Arthurian romances was written; and as both the French and English, and even the German, writers of these latter were certainly acquainted with the chansons, the imitation, if there were any, must lie on their side. As a matter of fact, however, there is little or none. The later and less genuine chansons borrow to some extent the methods and incidents in the romances; but the romances at no time exhibit much resemblance to the chansons proper, which have an extremely distinct, racy, and original character of their own. Hallam, writing later than Dunlop, and if with a less wide knowledge of Romance, with a much greater proficiency in general literary history, prac[Pg 29]tically passes the chansons de geste over altogether in the introduction to his Literature of Europe, which purports to summarise all that is important in the History of the Middle Ages, and to supplement and correct that book itself.

The only excuse (besides mere unavoidable ignorance, which, no doubt, is a sufficient one) for this neglect is the curious fact, in itself adding to their interest, that these chansons, though a very important chapter in the histories both of poetry and of fiction, form one which is strangely marked off at both ends from all connection, save in point of subject, with literature precedent or subsequent. As to their own origin, the usual abundant, warm, and if it may be said without impertinence, rather futile controversies have prevailed. Practically speaking, we know nothing whatever about the matter. There used to be a theory that the Charlemagne Romances owed their origin more or less directly to the fabulous Chronicle of Tilpin or Turpin, the warrior-Archbishop of Rheims. It has now been made tolerably certain that the Latin chronicle on the subject is not anterior even to our existing Chanson de Roland, and very probable that it is a good deal later. On the other hand, of actual historical basis we have next to nothing except the mere fact of the death of Roland ("Hruotlandus comes Britanniæ") at the skirmish of Roncesvalles. There are, however, early mentions of certain cantilenæ or ballads; and it has been assumed by some scholars that the earliest chansons were compounded out of precedent ballads of[Pg 30] the kind. It is unnecessary to inform those who know something of general literary history, that this theory (that the corruption of the ballad is the generation of the epic) is not confined to the present subject, but is one of the favourite fighting-grounds of a certain school of critics. It has been applied to Homer, to Beowulf, to the Old and Middle German Romances, and it would be very odd indeed if it had not been applied to the Chansons de geste. But it may be said with some confidence that not one tittle of evidence has ever been produced for the existence of any such ballads containing the matter of any of the chansons which do exist. The song of Roland which Taillefer sang at Hastings may have been such a ballad: it may have been part of the actual chanson; it may have been something quite different. But these "mays" are not evidence; and it cannot but be thought a real misfortune that, instead of confining themselves to an abundant and indeed inexhaustible subject, the proper literary study of what does exist, critics should persist in dealing with what certainly does not, and perhaps never did. On the general point it might be observed that there is rather more positive evidence for the breaking up of the epic into ballads than for the conglomeration of ballads into the epic. But on that point it is not necessary to take sides. The matter of real importance is, to lay it down distinctly that we have nothing anterior to the earliest chansons de geste; and that we have not even any satisfactory reason for presuming that there ever was anything.[Pg 31]

One of the reasons, however, which no doubt has been most apt to suggest anterior compositions is the singular completeness of form exhibited by these poems. It is now practically agreed that—scraps and fragments themselves excepted—we have no monument of French in accomplished profane literature more ancient than the Chanson de Roland.[20] And the form of this, though from one point of view it may be called rude and simple, is of remarkable perfection in its own way. The poem is written in decasyllabic iambic lines with a cæsura at the second foot, these lines being written with a precision which French indeed never afterwards lost, but which English did not attain till Chaucer's day, and then lost again for more than another century. Further, the grouping and finishing of these lines is not less remarkable, and is even more distinctive than their internal construction. They are not blank; they are not in couplets; they are not in equal stanzas; and they are not (in the earliest examples, such as Roland) regularly rhymed. But they are arranged in batches (called in French laisses or tirades) of no certain number, but varying from one to several score, each of which derives unity from an assonance—that is to say, a vowel-rhyme, the consonants of the final syllable varying at discretion. This assonance, which appears to have been common to all Romance tongues[Pg 32] in their early stages, disappeared before very long from French, though it continued in Spanish, and is indeed the most distinguishing point of the prosody of that language. Very early in the chansons themselves we find it replaced by rhyme, which, however, remains the same for the whole of the laisse, no matter how long it is. By degrees, also, the ten-syllabled line (which in some examples has an octosyllabic tail-line not assonanced at the end of every laisse) gave way in its turn to the victorious Alexandrine. But the mechanism of the chanson admitted no further extensions than the substitution of rhyme for assonance, and of twelve-syllabled lines for ten-syllabled. In all other respects it remained rigidly the same from the eleventh century to the fourteenth, and in the very latest examples of such poems, as Hugues Capet and Baudouin de Seboure—full as enthusiasts like M. Gautier complain that they are of a spirit very different from that of the older chansons—there is not the slightest change in form; while certain peculiarities of stock phrase and "epic repetition" are jealously preserved. The immense single-rhymed laisses, sometimes extending to several pages of verse, still roll rhyme after rhyme with the same sound upon the ear. The common form generally remains; and though the adventures are considerably varied, they still retain a certain general impress of the earlier scheme.

That scheme is, in the majority of the chansons, curiously uniform. It has, since the earliest studies of them, been remarked as odd that Charlemagne, though almost omnipresent (except of[Pg 33] course in the Crusading cycle and a few others), and though such a necessary figure that he is in some cases evidently confounded both with his ancestor Charles Martel and his successor Charles the Bald, plays a part that is very dubiously heroic. The character of Charlemagne. He is, indeed, presented with great pomp and circumstance as li empereres à la barbe florie, with a gorgeous court, a wide realm, a numerous and brilliant baronage. But his character is far from tenderly treated. In Roland itself he appears so little that critics who are not acquainted with many other poems sometimes deny the characteristic we are now discussing. But elsewhere he is much less leniently handled. Indeed the plot of very many chansons turns entirely on the ease with which he lends an ear to traitors (treason of various kinds plays an almost ubiquitous part, and the famous "trahis!" is heard in the very dawn of French literature), on his readiness to be biassed by bribes, and on the singular ferocity with which, on the slightest and most unsupported accusation, he is ready to doom any one, from his own family downwards, to block, stake, gallows, or living grave. This combination, indeed, of the irascible and the gullible tempers in the king defrays the plot of a very large number of the chansons, in which we see his best knights, and (except that they are as intolerant of injustice as he is prone to it) his most faithful servants, forced into rebellion against him, and almost overwhelmed by his own violence following on the machinations of their and his worst enemies.

Nevertheless, Charlemagne is always the defender[Pg 34] of the Cross, and the antagonist of the Saracens, and the part which these latter play is as ubiquitous as his own, and on the whole more considerable. A very large part of the earlier chansons is occupied with direct fighting against the heathen; and from an early period (at least if the Voyage à Constantinoble is, as is supposed, of the early twelfth century, if not the eleventh) a most important element, bringing the class more into contact with romance generally than some others which have been noticed, is introduced in the love of a Saracen princess, daughter of emperor or "admiral" (emir), for one of the Christian heroes. Here again Roland stands alone, and though the mention of Aude, Oliver's sister and Roland's betrothed, who dies when she hears of his death, is touching, it is extremely meagre. There is practically nothing but the clash of arms in this remarkable poem. But elsewhere there is, in rather narrow and usual limits, a good deal else. Charlemagne's daughter, and the daughters of peers and paladins, figure: and their characteristics are not very different from those of the pagan damsels. It is, indeed, unnecessary to convert them,—a process to which their miscreant sisters usually submit with great goodwill,—and they are also relieved from the necessity of showing the extreme undutifulness to their more religiously constant sires, which is something of a blot on Paynim princesses like Floripas in Fierabras. This heroine exclaims in reference to her father, "He is an old devil, why do you not kill him? little I care for him provided you give me Guy," though it is fair to say[Pg 35] that Fierabras himself rebukes her with a "Moult grant tort avès." All these ladies, however, Christian as well as heathen, are as tender to their lovers as they are hard-hearted to their relations; and the relaxation of morality, sometimes complained of in the later chansons, is perhaps more technical than real, even remembering the doctrine of the mediæval Church as to the identity, for practical purposes, of betrothal and marriage. On the other hand, the courtesy of the chansons is distinctly in a more rudimentary state than that of the succeeding romances. Not only is the harshest language used by knights to ladies,[21] but blows are by no means uncommon; and of what is commonly understood by romantic love there is on the knights' side hardly a trace, unless it be in stories such as that of Ogier le Danois, which are obviously late enough to have come under Arthurian influence. The piety, again, which has been so much praised in these chansons, is of a curious and rather elementary type. The knights are ready enough to fight to the last gasp, and the last drop of blood, for the Cross; and their faith is as free from flaw as their zeal. Li Apostoiles de Rome—the Pope—is recognised without the slightest hesitation as supreme in all religious and most temporal matters. But there is much less reference than in the Arthurian romances, not merely to the mysteries of the Creed, but even to the simple facts of the birth and death of Christ. Except in a few places—such as, for instance, the exquisite and widely popular story of Amis and[Pg 36] Amiles (the earliest vernacular form of which is a true chanson de geste of the twelfth century)—there are not many indications of any higher or finer notion of Christianity than that which is confined to the obedient reception of the sacraments, and the cutting off Saracens' heads whensoever they present themselves.[22]

In manners, as in theology and ethics, there is the same simplicity, which some have called almost barbarous. Architecture and dress receive considerable attention; but in other ways the arts do not seem to be far advanced, and living is still conducted nearly, if not quite, as much in public as in the Odyssey or in Beowulf. The hall is still the common resort of both sexes by day and of the men at night. Although gold and furs, silk and jewels, are lavished with the usual cheap magnificence of fiction, very few details are given of the minor supellex or of ways of living generally. From the Chanson de Roland in particular (which, though it is a pity to confine the attention to it as has sometimes been done, is undoubtedly the type of the class in its simplest and purest form) we should learn next to nothing about the state of society depicted, except that its heroes were religious in their fashion, and terrible fighters. But it ought to be added that the perusal of a large number of these chansons leaves on the mind a much more genuine belief in their world (if it may so be called) as having for a time actually existed, than that which is created by the[Pg 37] reading of Arthurian romance. That fair vision we know (hardly knowing why or how we know it) to have been a creation of its own Fata Morgana, a structure built of the wishes, the dreams, the ideals of men, but far removed from their actual experience. This is not due to miracles—there are miracles enough in the chansons de geste most undoubtingly related: nor to the strange history, geography, and chronology, for the two divisions are very much on a par there also. But strong as the fantastic element is in them, the chansons de geste possess a realistic quality which is entirely absent from the gracious idealism of the Romances. The emperors and the admirals, perhaps even their fair and obliging daughters, were not personages unknown to the contemporaries of the Norman conquerors of Italy and Sicily, or to the first Crusaders. The faithful and ferocious, covetous and indomitable, pious and lawless spirit, which hardly dropped the sword except to take up the torch, was, poetic presentation and dressing apart, not so very different from the general temper of man after the break up of the Roman peace till the more or less definite mapping out of Europe into modern divisions. More than one Vivien and one William of Orange listened to Peter the Hermit. In the very isolation of the atmosphere of these romances, in its distance from modern thought and feeling, in its lack (as some have held) of universal quality and transcendent human interest, there is a certain element of strength. It was not above its time, and it therefore does not reach the highest forms of literature. But it was intensely of[Pg 38] its time; and thus it far exceeds the lowest kinds, and retains an abiding value even apart from the distinct, the high, and the very curious perfection, within narrow limits, of its peculiar form.

It is probable that very few persons who are not specially acquainted with the subject are at all aware of the enormous bulk and number of these poems, even if their later remaniements (as they are called) both in verse and prose—fourteenth and fifteenth century refashionings, which in every case meant a large extension—be left out of consideration. The most complete list published, that of M. Léon Gautier, enumerates 110. Of these he himself places only the Chanson de Roland in the eleventh century, perhaps as early as the Norman Conquest of England, certainly not later than 1095. Twelfth century. To the twelfth he assigns (and it may be observed that, enthusiastic as M. Gautier is on the literary side, he shows on all questions of age, &c., a wariness not always exhibited by scholars more exclusively philological) Acquin, Aliscans, Amis et Amiles, Antioche Aspremont, Auberi le Bourgoing, Aye d'Avignon, the Bataille Loquifer, the oldest (now only known in Italian) form of Berte aus grans Piés, Beuves d'Hanstone (with another Italian form more or less independent), the Charroi de Nîmes, Les Chétifs, the Chevalerie Ogier de Danemarche, the Chevalerie Vivien (otherwise known as Covenant Vivien), the major part (also known by separate titles) of the Chevalier au Cygne, La Conquête de la Petite Bretagne (another form of Acquin), the Couronnement Loys, Doon de la Roche, Doon[Pg 39] de Nanteuil, the Enfances Charlemagne, the Enfances Godefroi, the Enfances Roland, the Enfances Ogier, Floovant, Garin le Loherain, Garnier de Nanteuil, Giratz de Rossilho, Girbert de Metz, Gui de Bourgogne, Gui de Nanteuil, Hélias, Hervis de Metz, the oldest form of Huon de Bordeaux, Jérusalem, Jourdains de Blaivies, the Lorraine cycle, including Garin, &c., Macaire, Mainet, the Moniage Guillaume, the Moniage Rainoart, Orson de Beauvais, Rainoart, Raoul de Cambrai, Les Saisnes, the Siège de Barbastre, Syracon, and the Voyage de Charlemagne. In other words, nearly half the total number date from the twelfth century, if not even earlier.

By far the larger number of the rest are not later than the thirteenth. They include—Aimeri de Narbonne, Aiol, Anséis de Carthage, Anséis Fils de Gerbert, Auberon, Berte aus grans Piés in its present French form, Beton et Daurel, Beuves de Commarchis, the Département des Enfans Aimeri, the Destruction de Rome, Doon de Mayence, Elie de Saint Gilles, the Enfances Doon de Mayence, the Enfances Guillaume, the Enfances Vivien, the Entrée en Espagne, Fierabras, Foulques de Candie, Gaydon, Garin de Montglane, Gaufrey, Gérard de Viane, Guibert d'Andrenas, Jehan de Lanson, Maugis d'Aigremont, the Mort Aimeri de Narbonne, Otinel, Parise la Duchesse, the Prise de Cordres, the Prise de Pampelune, the Quatre Fils d'Aymon, Renaud de Montauban (a variant of the same), Renier, the later forms of the Chanson de Roland, to which the name of Roncevaux is sometimes given for the sake of distinction, the Siège de[Pg 40] Narbonne, Simon de Pouille, Vivien l'Amachour de Montbranc, and Yon.

By this the list is almost exhausted. The fourteenth century, though fruitful in remaniements, sometimes in mono-rhymed tirades, but often in Alexandrine couplets and other changed shapes, contributes hardly anything original except the very interesting and rather brilliant last branches of the Chevalier au Cygne—Baudouin de Seboure, and the Bastart de Bouillon; Hugues Capet, a very lively and readable but slightly vulgar thing, exhibiting an almost undisguised tone of parody; and some fragments known by the names of Hernaut de Beaulande, Renier de Gennes, &c. As for fifteenth and sixteenth century work, though some pieces of it, especially the very long and unprinted poem of Lion de Bourges, are included in the canon, all the chanson-production of this time is properly apocryphal, and has little or nothing left of the chanson spirit, and only the shell of the chanson form.

It must further be remembered that, with the exception of a very few in fragmentary condition, all these poems are of great length. Only the later or less genuine, indeed, run to the preposterous extent of twenty, thirty, or (it is said in the case of Lion de Bourges) sixty thousand lines. But Roland itself, one of the shortest, has four thousand; Aliscans, which is certainly old, eight thousand; the oldest known form of Huon, ten thousand. It is probably not excessive to put the average length of the older chansons at six thousand lines; while if the[Pg 41] more recent be thrown in, the average of the whole hundred would probably be doubled.

This immense body of verse, which for many reasons it is very desirable to study as a whole, is still, after the best part of a century, to a great extent unprinted, and (as was unavoidable) such of its constituents as have been sent to press have been dealt with on no very uniform principles. It was less inevitable, and is more to be regretted, that the dissensions of scholars on minute philological points have caused the repeated printing of certain texts, while others have remained inaccessible; and it cannot but be regarded as a kind of petty treason to literature thus to put the satisfaction of private crotchets before the "unlocking of the word-hoard" to the utmost possible extent. The earliest chansons printed[23] were, I believe, M. Paulin Paris's Berte aus grans Piés, M. Francisque Michel's Roland; and thereafter these two scholars and others edited for M. Techener a very handsome set of "Romances des Douze Pairs," as they were called, including Les Saisnes, Ogier, Raoul de Cambrai, Garin, and the two great crusading chansons, Antioche and Jérusalem. Other scattered efforts were made, such as the publication of a beautiful edition of Baudouin de Seboure at Valenciennes as early as 1841; while a Belgian scholar, M. de Reiffenberg, published Le Chevalier au Cygne, and a Dutch one, Dr Jonckbloët, gave a large part of the later numbers of the Garin de Montglane cycle in his Guillaume d'Orange (2 vols., The Hague, 1854). But[Pg 42] the great opportunity came soon after the accession of Napoleon III., when a Minister favourable to literature, M. de Fourtou, gave, in a moment of enthusiasm, permission to publish the entire body of the chansons. Perfect wisdom would probably have decreed the acceptance of the godsend by issuing the whole, with a minimum of editorial apparatus, in some such form as that of our Chalmers's Poets, the bulk of which need probably not have been exceeded in order to give the oldest forms of every real chanson from Roland to the Bastart de Bouillon. But perfect wisdom is not invariably present in the councils of men, and the actual result took the form of ten agreeable little volumes, in the type, shape, and paper of the "Bibliothèque Elzévirienne" with abundant editorial matter, paraphrases in modern French, and the like. Les Anciens Poètes de la France, as this series was called, appeared between 1858, which saw the first volume, and 1870, which fatal year saw the last, for the Republic had no money to spare for such monarchical glories as the chansons. They are no contemptible possession; for the ten volumes give fourteen chansons of very different ages, and rather interestingly representative of different kinds. But they are a very small portion of the whole, and in at least one instance, Aliscans, they double on a former edition. Since then the Société des Anciens Textes Français has edited some chansons, and independent German and French scholars have given some more; but no systematic attempt has been made to fill the gaps, and the pernicious system of re-editing, on pretext of wrong[Pg 43] selection of MSS. or the like, has continued. Nevertheless, the number of chansons actually available is so large that no general characteristic is likely to have escaped notice; while from the accounts of the remaining MSS., it would not appear that any of those unprinted can rank with the very best of those already known. Among these very best I should rank in alphabetical order—Aliscans, Amis et Amiles, Antioche, Baudouin de Seboure (though in a mixed kind), Berte aus grans Piés, Fierabras, Garin le Loherain, Gérard de Roussillon, Huon de Bordeaux, Ogier de Danemarche, Raoul de Cambrai, Roland, and the Voyage de Charlemagne à Constantinoble. The almost solitary eminence assigned by some critics to Roland is not, I think, justified, and comes chiefly from their not being acquainted with many others; though the poem has undoubtedly the merit of being the oldest, and perhaps that of presenting the chanson spirit in its best and most unadulterated, as well as the chanson form at its simplest, sharpest, and first state. Nor is there anywhere a finer passage than the death of Roland, though there are many not less fine.

It may, however, seem proper, if not even positively indispensable, to give some more general particulars about these chansons before analysing specimens or giving arguments of one or more; for they are full of curiosities.

In the first place, it will be noticed by careful readers of the list above given, that these compositions are not limited to French proper or to the langue d'oïl, though infinitely the greater part of[Pg 44] them are in that tongue. Indeed, for some time after attention had been drawn to them, and before their actual natures and contents had been thoroughly examined, there was a theory that they were Provençal in origin. This, though it was chiefly due to the fact that Raynouard, Fauriel, and other early students of old French had a strong southern leaning, had some other excuses. It is a fact that Provençal was earlier in its development than French; and whether by irregular tradition of this fact, or owing to ignorance, or from anti-French prejudice (which, however, would not apply in France itself), the part of the langue d'oc in the early literature of Europe was for centuries largely overvalued. Then came the usual reaction, and some fifty years ago or so one of the most capable of literary students declared roundly that the Provençal epic had "le défaut d'être perdu." That is not quite true. There is, as noted above, a Provençal Fierabras, though it is beyond doubt an adaptation of the French; Betonnet d'Hanstone or Beton et Daurel only exists in Provençal, though there is again no doubt of its being borrowed; and, lastly, the oldest existing, and probably the original, form of Gérard de Roussillon, Giratz de Rossilho, is, as its title implies, Provençal, though it is in a dialect more approaching to the langue d'oïl than any form of oc, and even presents the curious peculiarity of existing in two forms, one leaning to Provençal, the other to French. But these very facts, though they show the statement that "the Provençal epic is lost" to be excessive, yet go almost farther than a total deficiency in proving that the chanson de geste was not originally[Pg 45] Provençal. Had it been otherwise, there can be no possible reason why a bare three per cent of the existing examples should be in the southern tongue, while two of these are evidently translations, and the third was as evidently written on the very northern borders of the "Limousin" district.

The next fact—one almost more interesting, inasmuch as it bears on that community of Romance tongues of which we have evidence in Dante,[24] and perhaps also makes for the antiquity of the Charlemagne story in its primitive form—is the existence of chansons in Italian, and, it may be added, in a most curious bastard speech which is neither French, nor Provençal, nor Italian, but French Italicised in part.[25] The substance, moreover, of the Charlemagne stories was very early naturalised in Italy in the form of a sort of abstract or compilation called the Reali di Francia,[26] which in various forms maintained popularity through mediæval and early modern times, and undoubtedly exercised much influence on the great Italian poets of the Renaissance. Diffusion of the chansons. They were also diffused throughout Europe, the Carlamagnus Saga in Iceland marking their farthest actual as well as possible limit, though they never in Germany attained anything like the popularity of the Arthurian legend, and though the Spaniards, patriotically resenting the frequent forays into Spain to which[Pg 46] the chansons bear witness, and availing themselves of the confession of disaster at Roncesvalles, set up a counter-story in which Roland is personally worsted by Bernardo del Carpio, and the quarrels of the paynims are taken up by Spain herself. In England the imitations, though fairly numerous, are rather late. They have been completely edited for the Early English Text Society, and consist (for Bevis of Hampton has little relation with its chanson namesake save the name) of Sir Ferumbras (Fierabras), The Siege of Milan, Sir Otuel (two forms), the Life of Charles the Great, The Soudone of Babylone, Huon of Bordeaux, and The Four Sons of Aymon, besides a very curious semi-original entitled Rauf Coilzear (Collier), in which the well-known romance-donnée of the king visiting some obscure person is applied to Charlemagne. Of these, one, the version of Huon of Bordeaux,[27] is literature of no mean kind; but this is because it was executed by Lord Berners, long after our present period. Also, being of that date, it represents the latest French form of the story, which was a very popular one, and incorporated very large borrowings from other sources (the loadstone rock, the punishment of Cain, and so forth) which are foreign to the subject and substance of the chansons proper.

Very great pains have been spent on the question of the authorship, publication, or performance of these compositions. As is the case with so much mediæval work, the great mass[Pg 47] of them is entirely anonymous. A line which concludes, or rather supplements, Roland—

has been the occasion of the shedding of a very great deal of ink. The enthusiastic inquisitiveness of some has ferreted about in all directions for Turolds, Thorolds, or Therouldes, in the eleventh century, and discovering them even among the companions of the Conqueror himself, has started the question whether Taillefer was or was not violating the copyright of his comrade at Hastings. The fact is, however, that the best authorities are very much at sea as to the meaning of declinet, which, though it must signify "go over," "tell like a bead-roll," in some way or other, might be susceptible of application to authorship, recitation, or even copying. In some other cases, however, we have more positive testimony, though they are in a great minority. Graindor of Douai refashioned the work of Richard the Pilgrim, an actual partaker of the first Crusade, into the present Antioche, Jérusalem, and perhaps Les Chétifs. Either Richard or Graindor must have been one of the very best poets of the whole cycle. Jehan de Flagy wrote the spirited Garin le Loherain; and Jehan Bodel of Arras Les Saisnes. Adenès le Roi, a trouvère, of whose actual position in the world we know a little, wrote or refashioned three or four chansons of the thirteenth century, including Berte aus grans Piés, and one of the forms of part of Ogier. Other names—Bertrand of Bar sur Aube, Pierre de Rieu, Gérard d'Amiens, Raimbert de Paris,[Pg 48] Brianchon (almost a character of Balzac!), Gautier of Douai, Nicolas of Padua (an interesting person who was warned in a dream to save his soul by compiling a chanson), Herbert of Dammartin, Guillaume de Bapaume, Huon de Villeneuve—are mere shadows of names to which in nearly all cases no personality attaches, and which may be as often those of mere jongleurs as of actual poets.

No subject, however, in connection with these chansons de geste has occupied more attention than the precise mode of what has been called above their "authorship, publication, or performance." They are called chansons, and there is no doubt at all that in their inception, and during the earlier and better part of their history, they strictly deserved the name, having been written not to be read but to be sung or recited. To a certain extent, of course, this was the case with all the lighter literature of mediæval times. Far later than our present period the English metrical romances almost invariably begin with the minstrel's invocation, "Listen, lordings," varied according to his taste, fancy, and metre; and what was then partly a tradition, was two or three hundred years earlier the simple record of a universal practice. Since the early days of the Romantic revival, even to the present time, the minutest details of this singing and recitation have been the subject of endless wrangling; and even the point whether it was "singing" or "recitation" has been argued. In a wider and calmer view these things become of very small interest. Singing and recitation[Pg 49]—as the very word recitative should be enough to remind any one—pass into each other by degrees imperceptible to any but a technical ear; and the instruments, if any, which accompanied the performance of the chansons, the extent of that accompaniment, and the rest, concern, if they concern history at all, the history of music, not that of literature.

But it is a matter of quite other importance that, as has been said, lighter mediæval literature generally, and the chansons in particular, were meant for the ear, not the eye—to be heard, not to be read. For this intention very closely concerns some of their most important literary characteristics. It is certain as a matter of fact, though it might not be very easy to account for it as a matter of argument, that repetitions, stock phrases, identity of scheme and form, which are apt to be felt as disagreeable in reading, are far less irksome, and even have a certain attraction, in matter orally delivered. Whether that slower irritation of the mind through the ear of which Horace speaks supplies the explanation may be left undiscussed. But it is certain that, especially for uneducated hearers (who in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, if not in the thirteenth, must have been the enormous majority), not merely the phraseological but the rhythmical peculiarities of the chansons would be specially suitable. Effect on prosody.In particular, the long maintenance of the mono-rhymed, or even the single-assonanced, tirade depends almost entirely upon its being delivered vivâ voce. Only then does[Pg 50] that wave-clash which has been spoken of produce its effect, while the unbroken uniformity of rhyme on the printed page, and the apparent absence of uniformity in the printed assonances, are almost equally annoying to the eye. Nor is it important or superfluous to note that this oral literature had, in the Teutonic countries and in England more especially, an immense influence (hitherto not nearly enough allowed for by literary historians) in the great change from a stressed and alliterative to a quantitative and rhymed prosody, which took place, with us, from about 1200 a.d. Accustomed as were the ears of all to quantitative (though very licentiously quantitative) and rhymed measures in the hymns and services of the Church—the one literary exercise to which gentle and simple, learned and unlearned, were constantly and regularly addicted—it was almost impossible that they should not demand a similar prosody in the profaner compositions addressed to them. That this would not affect the chansons themselves is true enough; for there are no relics of any alliterative prosody in French, and its accentual scanning is only the naturally "crumbled" quantity of Latin. But it is extremely important to note that the metre of these chansons themselves, single-rhyme and all, directly influenced English writers. Of this, however, more will be found in the chapter on the rise of English literature proper.

Another, and for literature a hardly less important, consequence of this intention of being heard, was that probably from the very first, and certainly from an early period, a distinction, not very[Pg 51] different from that afterwards occasioned by the drama, took place between the trouvère who invented the chanson and the jongleur or minstrel who introduced it. At first these parts may, for better or worse, have been doubled. But it would seldom happen that the poet who had the wits to indite would have the skill to perform; and it would happen still seldomer that those whose gifts lay in the direction of interpretation would have the poetical spirit. Nor is it wonderful that, in the poems themselves, we find considerably more about the performer than about the author. In the cases where they were identical, the author would evidently be merged in the actor; in cases where they were not, the actor would take care of himself. Accordingly, though we know if possible even less of the names of the jongleurs than of those of the trouvères, we know a good deal about their methods. Very rarely does an author like Nicolas of Padua (v. supra) tell us so much as his motive for composing the poems. But the patient study of critics, eked out it may be by a little imagination here and there, has succeeded in elaborating a fairly complete account of the ways and fortunes of the jongleur, who also not improbably, even where he was not the author, adjusted to the chansons which were his copyright, extempore codas, episodes, tags, and gags of different kinds. Immense pains have been spent upon the jongleur. It has been asserted, and it is not improbable, that during the palmiest days—say the eleventh and twelfth centuries—of the chansons a special order of the jongleur or minstrel hierarchy concerned itself with them,—it is at least certain that[Pg 52] the phrase chanter de geste occurs several times in a manner, and with a context, which seem to justify its being regarded as a special term of art. And the authors at least present their heroes as deliberately expecting that they will be sung about, and fearing the chance of a dishonourable mention; a fact which, though we must not base any calculations upon it as to the actual sentiments of Roland or Ogier, Raoul or Huon, is a fact in itself. And it is also a fact that in the fabliaux and other light verse of the time we find jongleurs presented as boasting of the particular chansons they can sing.

But the enumeration of the kinds of jongleurs—those itinerant, those attached to courts and great families, &c.—would lead us too far. They were not all of one sex, and we hear of jongleresses and chanteresses, such as Adeline who figures in the history of the Norman Conquest, Aiglantine who sang before the Duke of Burgundy, Gracieuse d'Espagne, and so forth—pretty names, as even M. Gautier, who is inclined to be suspicious of them, admits. These suspicions, it is fair to say, were felt at the time. Don Jayme of Aragon forbade noble ladies to kiss jongleresses or share bed and board with them; while the Church, which never loved the jongleur much, decided that the duty of a wife to follow her husband ceased if he took to jongling, which was a vita turpis et inhonesta. Further, the pains above referred to, bestowed by scholars of all sorts, from Percy downwards, have discovered or guessed at the clothes which the jongleur and his[Pg 53] mate wore, and the instruments with which they accompanied their songs. It is more germane to our purpose to know, as we do in one instance on positive testimony, the principles (easily to be guessed, by the way) on which the introduction of names into these poems were arranged. It appears, on the authority of the historian of Guisnes and Ardres, that Arnold the Old, Count of Ardres, would actually have had his name in the Chanson d'Antioche had he not refused a pair of scarlet boots or breeches to the poet or performer thereof. Nor is it more surprising to find, on the still more indisputable authority of passages in the chansons themselves, that the jongleur would stop singing at an interesting point to make a collection, and would even sometimes explicitly protest against the contribution of too small coins—poitevines, mailles, and the like.

It is impossible not to regard with a mixture of respect and pity the labour which has been spent on collecting details of the kind whereof, in the last paragraph or two, a few examples have been given. But they really have very little, if anything, to do with literature; and what they have to do with it is common to all times and subjects. The excessive prodigality to minstrels of which we have record parallels itself in other times in regard to actors, jockeys, musicians, and other classes of mechanical pleasure-makers whose craft happens to be popular for the moment. And it was never more likely to be shown than in the Middle Ages, when generosity was a profane virtue; when the Church had set the ex[Pg 54]ample—an example the too free extension of which she resented highly—of putting reckless giving above almost all other good deeds; and when the system of private war, of ransoms and other things of the same kind, made "light come, light go," a maxim almost more applicable than in the days of confiscations, in those of pensions on this or that list, or in those of stock-jobbing. Moreover, inquirers into this matter have certainly not escaped the besetting sin of all but strictly political historians—a sin which even the political historian has not always avoided—the sin of mixing up times and epochs.

It is the great advantage of that purely literary criticism, which is so little practised and to some extent so unpopular, that it is able to preserve accuracy in this matter. When with the assistance (always to be gratefully received) of philologists and historians in the strict sense the date of a literary work is ascertained with sufficient—it is only in a few cases that it can be ascertained with absolute—exactness, the historian of literature places it in that position for literary purposes only, and neither mixes it with other things nor endeavours to use it for purposes other than literary. To recur to an example mentioned above, Adeline in the eleventh century and Gracieuse d'Espagne in the fifteenth are agreeable objects of contemplation and ornaments of discourse; but, once more, neither has much, if anything, to do with literature.

We may therefore with advantage, having made this digression to comply a little with prevalent fashions, return to the chansons themselves, to the half-million or million verses of majestic[Pg 55] cadence written in one of the noblest languages, for at least first effect, to be found in the history of the world, possessing that character of distinction, of separate and unique peculiarity in matter and form, which has such extraordinary charm, and endowed besides, more perhaps than any other division, with the attraction of presenting an utterly vanished Past. The late Mr Froude found in church-bells—the echo of the Middle Ages—suggestion of such a vanishing. To some of us there is nothing dead in church-bells; there is only in them, as in the Arthurian legends, for instance, a perennial thing still presented in associations, all the more charming for being slightly antique. But the chansons de geste, living by the poetry of their best examples, by the fire of their sentiment, by the clash and clang of their music, are still in thought, in connection with manners, hopes, aims, almost more dead than any of the classics. The literary misjudgment of them which was possible in quite recent times, to two such critics—very different, but each of the first class—as Mr Matthew Arnold and M. Ferdinand Brunetière, is half excused by this curious feature in their own literary character. More than mummies or catacombs, more than Herculaneum and Pompeii, they bring us face to face with something so remote and afar that we can hardly realise it at all. It may be that that peculiarity of the French genius, which, despite its unsurpassed and almost unmatched literary faculty, has prevented it from contributing any of the very greatest masterpieces to the literature of the world, has communicated to them this aloofness, this, as it may almost be called, provincialism. But[Pg 56] some such note there is in them, and it may be that the immense stretch of time during which they were worse than unknown—misknown—has brought it about.

Yet their interest is not the less; it is perhaps even the more. It is nearly twenty years since I began to read them, and during that period I have also been reading masses of other literature from other times, nations, and languages; yet I cannot at this moment take up one without being carried away by the stately language, as precise and well proportioned as modern French, yet with much of the grandeur which modern French lacks, the statelier metre, the noble phrase, the noble incident and passion. Take, for instance, one of the crowning moments, for there are several, of the death-scene of Roland, that where the hero discovers the dead archbishop, with his hands—"the white, the beautiful"—crossed on his breast:—

[Pg 57]

Then turn to, perhaps, the very last poem which can be called a chanson de geste proper in style, Le Bastart de Bouillon, and open on these lines:—

This is in no way a specially fine passage, it is the very "padding" of the average chanson, but what padding it is! Compare the mere sound, the clash and clang of the verse, with the ordinary English romance in Sir Thopas metre, or even with the Italian poets. How alert, how succinct, how finished it is beside the slip-shodness of the first, in too many instances;[32] how manly, how intense, beside the mere sweetness of the second! The very ring of the lines brings mail-shirt and flat-topped helmet before us.

But in order to the proper comprehension of this[Pg 58] section of literature, it is necessary that something more should be said as well of the matter at large as of the construction and contents of separate poems; and, most of all, of the singular process of adjustment of these separate poems by which the geste proper (that is to say, the subdivision of the whole which deals more or less distinctly with a single subject) is constituted. Here again we find a "difference" of the poems in the strict logical sense. The total mass of the Arthurian story may be, though more probably it is not, as large as that of the Charlemagne romances, and it may well seem to some of superior literary interest. But from its very nature, perhaps from the very nature of its excellence, it lacks this special feature of the chansons de geste. Arthur may or may not be a greater figure in himself than Charlemagne; but when the genius of Map (or of some one else) had hit upon the real knotting and unknotting of the story—the connection of the frailty of Guinevere with the Quest for the Grail—complete developments of the fates of minor heroes, elaborate closings of minor incidents, became futile. Endless stories could be keyed or geared on to different parts of the main legend: there might be a Tristan-saga, a Palomides-saga, a Gawain-saga, episodes of Balin or of Beaumains, incidents of the fate of the damsel of Astolat or the resipiscence of Geraint. But the central interest was too artistically complete to allow any of these to occupy very much independent space.

In our present subject, on the other hand, even Charlemagne's life is less the object of the story than[Pg 59] the history of France; and enormous as the falsification of that history may seem to modern criticism, the writers always in a certain sense remembered that they were historians. When an interesting and important personality presented itself, it was their duty to follow it out to the end, to fill up the gaps of forerunners, to round it off and shade it in.[33] Thus it happens that the geste or saga of Guillaume d'Orange—which is itself not the whole of the great geste of Garin de Montglane—occupies eighteen separate poems, some of them of great length; that the crusading series, beginning no doubt in a simple historical poem, which was extended and "cycled," has seven, the Lorraine group five; while in the extraordinary monument of industry and enthusiasm which for some eight hundred pages M. Léon Gautier has devoted to the king's geste, twenty-seven different chansons are more or less abstracted. Several others might have been added here if M. Gautier had laid down less strict rules of exclusion against mere romans d'aventures subsequently tied on, like the above-mentioned outlying romances of the Arthurian group, to the main subject.

It seems necessary, therefore, or at least desirable, especially as these poems are still far too little known to English readers, to give in the first place a more or less detailed account of one of the groups; in the second, a still[Pg 60] more detailed account of a particular chanson, which to be fully illustrative should probably be a member of this group; and lastly, some remarks on the more noteworthy and accessible (for it is ill speaking at second-hand from accounts of manuscripts) of the remaining poems. For the first purpose nothing can be better than Guillaume d'Orange, many, though not all, of the constituents of which are in print, and which has had the great advantage of being systematically treated by more than one or two of the most competent scholars of the century on the subject—Dr Jonckbloët, MM. Guessard and A. de Montaiglon, and M. Gautier himself. Of this group the short, very old, and very characteristic Couronnement Loys will supply a good subject for more particular treatment, a subject all the more desirable that Roland may be said to be comparatively familiar, and is accessible in English translations.

The poem as we have it[34] begins with a double exordium, from which the jongleur might perhaps choose as from alternative collects in a liturgy. Each is ten lines long, and while the first rhymes throughout, the second has only a very imperfect assonance. Each bespeaks attention and promises satisfaction in the usual manner, though in different terms—

A much less commonplace note is struck immediately[Pg 61] afterwards in what may be excusably taken to be the real beginning of the poem:—

Then the story itself is plunged into in right style. When the chapel was blessed at Aix and the minster dedicated and made, there was a mighty court held. Poor and rich received justice; eighteen bishops, as many archbishops, twenty-six abbots, and four crowned kings attended; the Pope of Rome himself said mass; and Louis, son of Charlemagne, was brought up to the high altar where the crown was laid. At this moment the people are informed that Charles feels his death approaching, and must hand over his kingdom to his son. They thank God that no strange king is to come on them. But when the emperor, after good advice as to life and policy, bids him not dare to take the crown unless he is prepared for a clean and valiant life, the infant (li enfes) does not dare. The people weep, and the king storms, declaring that the prince is no son of his and shall be made a monk. But Hernaut of Orleans, a great noble, strikes in, and pretending to plead for Louis on the score of his extreme youth, offers to take the regency for three years, when, if the prince has become a good knight, he shall have the kingdom back, and in increased good condition.[Pg 62] Charlemagne, with the singular proneness to be victim of any kind of "confidence trick" which he shows throughout the chansons, is turning a willing ear to this proposition when William of Orange enters, and, wroth at the notion, thinks of striking off Hernaut's head. But remembering

he changes his plan and only pummels him to death with his fists, a distinction which seems indifferential. Then he takes the crown himself, places it on the boy's head, and Charles accommodates himself to this proceeding as easily as to the other proposal.

Five years pass: and it is a question, not of the mere choice of a successor or assessor, but of actual death. He repeats his counsels to his son, with the additional and very natural warning to rely on William. Unluckily this chief, who is in the earlier part of the chanson surnamed Firebrace (not to be confounded with the converted Saracen of that name), is not at the actual time of the king's death at Aix, but has gone on pilgrimage, in fulfilment of a vow, to Rome. He comes at a good time, for the Saracens have just invaded Italy, have overthrown the King of Apulia with great slaughter, and are close to Rome. The Pope (the "Apostle") hears of William, and implores his succour, which, though he has but forty knights and the Saracens are in their usual thousands, he consents to give. The Pope promises him as a reward that he may eat meat all the days of his life, and take as many wives as he chooses,—a method of[Pg 63] guerdon which shocks M. Gautier, the most orthodox as well as not the least scholarly of scholars. However, the Holy Father also wishes to buy off the heathen, thereby showing a truly apostolic ignorance of the world. Galafré, the "admiral," however has a point of honour. He will not be bought off. He informs the Pope, calling him "Sir with the big hat,"[35] that he is a descendant of Romulus and Julius Cæsar, and for that reason feels it necessary to destroy Rome and its clerks who serve God. He relents, however, so far as to propose to decide the matter by single combat, to which the Pope, according to all but nineteenth century sentiment, very properly consents. William is, of course, the Christian champion; the Saracen is a giant named Corsolt, very hideous, very violent, and a sort of Mahometan Capaneus in his language. The Pope does not entirely trust in William's valour, but rubs him all over with St Peter's arm, which confers invulnerability. Unfortunately the "promontory of the face" is omitted. The battle is fierce, but not long. Corsolt cuts off the uncharmed tip of William's nose (whence his epic surname of Guillaume au Court Nez), but William cuts off Corsolt's head. The Saracens fly: William (he has joked rather ruefully with the Pope on his misadventure, which, as being a recognised form of punishment, was almost a disgrace even when honourably incurred) pursues them, captures Galafré, converts him at point of sword, and receives from him the offer of his beautiful daughter. The marriage is[Pg 64] about to be celebrated, William and the Saracen princess are actually at the altar, when a messenger from Louis arrives claiming the champion's help against the traitors who already wish to wrest the sceptre from his hand. William asks the Pope what he is to do, and the Pope says "Go":

Promptly as he acts, however, he is only in time to repair, not to prevent, the mischief. The rebels have already dethroned Louis and imprisoned him at St Martins in Tours, making Acelin of Rouen, son of Richard, Emperor. William makes straight for Tours, prevails on the castellan of the gate-fortress to let him in, kicks—literally kicks—the monks out of their abbey, and rescues Louis. He then kills Acelin, violently maltreats his father, and rapidly traverses the whole of France, reducing the malcontents.

Peace having been for the time restored at home, William returns to Rome, where many things have happened. The Pope and Galafré are dead, the princess, though she is faithful to William, has other suitors, and there is a fresh invasion, not this time of heathen Asiatics, but led by Guy of Germany. The Count of Orange forces Louis (who behaves in a manner justifying the rebels) to accompany him with a great army to Rome, defeats the Germans, takes his fainéant emperor's part in a single combat with Guy, and is again victorious. Nor, though he has[Pg 65] to treat his pusillanimous sovereign in an exceedingly cavalier fashion, does he fail to have Louis crowned again as Emperor of Rome. A fresh rebellion breaking out in France, he again subdues it; and strengthens the tottering house of Charles Martel by giving his own sister Blanchefleur to the chicken-hearted king.

ends the poem with its usual laconism.

There is, of course, in this story an element of rough comedy, approaching horse-play, which may not please all tastes. This element, however, is very largely present in the chansons (though it so happens, yet once more, that Roland is accidentally free from it), and it is especially obvious in the particular branch or geste of William with the Short Nose, appearing even in the finest and longest of the subdivisions, Aliscans, which some have put at the head of the whole. In fact, as we might expect, the esprit gaulois can seldom refrain altogether from pleasantry, and its pleasantry at this time is distinctly "the humour of the stick." But still the poem is a very fine one. Its ethical opening is really noble: the picture of the Court at Aix has grandeur, for all its touches of simplicity; the fighting is good; the marriage scene and its fatal interruption (for we hear nothing of the princess on William's second visit to Rome) give a dramatic turn: and though there is no fine writing, there is a refreshing directness. The[Pg 66] shortness, too (it has less than three thousand lines), is undoubtedly in its favour, for these pieces are apt to be rather too long than too short. And if the pusillanimity and fainéantise of Louis seem at first sight exaggerated, it must be remembered that, very awkward as was the position of a Henry III. of England in the thirteenth century, and a James III. of Scotland in the fifteenth, kings of similar character must have cut even worse figures in the tenth or eleventh, when the story was probably first elaborated, and worse still in the days of the supposed occurrence of its facts. Indeed, one of the best passages as poetry, and one of the most valuable as matter, is that in which the old king warns his trembling son how he must not only do judgment and justice, must not only avoid luxury and avarice, protect the orphan and do the widow no wrong, but must be ready at any moment to cross the water of Gironde with a hundred thousand men in order to craventer et confondre the pagan host,—how he must be towards his own proud vassals "like a man-eating leopard," and if any dare levy war against him, must summon his knights, besiege the traitor's castle, waste and spoil all his land, and when he is taken show him no mercy, but lop him limb from limb, burn him in fire, or drown him in the sea.[36] It is not precisely an amiable spirit, this spirit of the chansons: but there is this to be said in its favour, there is no mistake about it.

It may be perhaps expected that before, in the[Pg 67] second place, summing the other branches of the saga of this William of Orange, it should be said who he was. But it is better to refer to the authorities already given on this, after all, not strictly literary point. Enormous pains have been spent on the identification or distinction of William Short-nose, Saint William of Gellona, William Tow-head of Poitiers, William Longsword of Normandy, as well as several other Williams. It may not be superfluous, and is certainly not improper, for those who undertake the elaborate editing of a particular poem to enter into such details. But for us, who are considering the literary development of Europe, it would be scarcely germane. It is enough that certain trouvères found in tradition, in history freely treated, or in their own imaginations, the material which they worked into this great series of poems, of which those concerning William directly amount to eighteen, while the entire geste of Garin de Montglane runs to twenty-four.

For the purposes of the chansons, William of the Strong Arm or the Short Nose is Count, or rather Marquis, of Orange, one of Charlemagne's peers, a special bulwark of France and Christendom towards the south-east, and a man of approved valour, loyalty, and piety, but of somewhat rough manners. Also (which is for the chanson de geste of even greater importance) he is grandson of Garin de Montglane and the son of Aimeri de Narbonne, heroes both, and possessors of the same good qualities which extend to all the[Pg 68] family. For it is a cardinal point of the chansons that not only bon sang chasse de race, but evil blood likewise. And the House of Narbonne, or Montglane, or Orange, is as uniformly distinguished for loyalty as the Normans and part of the house of Mayence for "treachery." To illustrate its qualities, twenty-four chansons, as has been said, are devoted, six of which tell the story before William, and the remaining eighteen that of his life. The first in M. Gautier's order[37] is Les Enfances Garin de Montglane. Garin de Montglane, the son of Duke Savary of Aquitaine and a mother persecuted by false accusations, like so many heroines of the middle ages, fights first in Sicily, procures atonement for his mother's wrongs, and then goes to the Court of Charlemagne, who, according to the general story, is his exact equal in age, as is also Doon de Mayence, the special hero of the third great geste. He conquers Montglane, and marries the Lady Mabille, his marriage and its preliminaries filling the second romance, or Garin de Montglane proper. He has by Mabille four sons—Hernaut de Beaulande, Girart de Viane, Renier de Gennes, and Milles de Pouille. Each of the three first is the subject of an existing chanson, and doubtless the fourth was similarly honoured. Girart de Viane is one of the most striking of the chansons in matter. The hero quarrels with Charlemagne owing to the bad offices of the empress, and a great barons' war follows, in which Roland and Oliver have[Pg 69] their famous fight, and Roland is betrothed to Oliver's sister Aude. Hernaut de Beaulande tells how the hero conquers Aquitaine, marries Fregonde, and becomes the father of Aimeri de Narbonne; and Renier de Gennes in like fashion the success of its eponym at Genoa, and his becoming the father of Oliver and Aude. Then we pass to the third generation (Charlemagne reigning all the time) with the above-named Aimeri de Narbonne. The events of this come after Roncesvalles, and it is on the return thence that, Narbonne being in Paynim hands, Aimeri, after others have refused, takes the adventure, the town, and his surname. He marries Hermengart, sister of the king of the Lombards, repulses the Saracens, who endeavour to recover Narbonne, and begets twelve children, of whom the future William of Orange is one. These chansons, with the exception of Girart de Viane, which was printed early, remained much longer in MS. than their successors, and the texts are not accessible in any such convenient corpus as De Jonckbloët's though some have been edited recently.

Three poems intervene between Aimeri de Narbonne and the Couronnement Loys, but they do not seem to have been always kept apart. The first, the Enfances Guillaume, tells how when William himself had left Narbonne for Charlemagne's Court, and his father was also absent, the Saracens under Thibaut, King of Arabia, laid siege to the town, laying at the same time siege to the heart of the beautiful Saracen Princess Orable, who lives in the enchanted palace of Gloriette at Orange, itself then, as Narbonne had been, a pagan possession.[Pg 70] William, going with his brothers to succour their mother, captures Baucent, a horse sent by the princess to Thibaut, and falls in love with her, his love being returned. She is forced to marry Thibaut, but preserves herself by witchcraft as a wife only in name. Orange does not fall into the hand of the Christians, though they succeed in relieving Narbonne. William meanwhile has returned to Court, and has been solemnly dubbed knight, his enfances then technically ceasing.

This is followed by the Département des Enfans Aimeri, in which William's brothers, following his example, leave Narbonne and their father for different parts of France, and achieve adventures and possessions. One of them, Bernart of Brabant, is often specially mentioned in the latter branches of the cycle as the most valiant of the clan next to Guillaume, and it is not improbable that he had a chanson to himself. The youngest, Guibelin, remains, and in the third Siege of Narbonne, which has a poem to itself, he shows prowess against the Saracens, but is taken prisoner. He is rescued from crucifixion by his aged father, who cuts his way through the Saracens and carries off his son. But the number of the heathen is too great, and the city must have surrendered if an embassy sent to Charlemagne had not brought help, headed by William himself, in time. He is as victorious as usual, but after his victory again returns to Aix.

Now begins the Couronnement Loys, of which the more detailed abstract given above may serve, not[Pg 71] merely to make the individual piece known, but to indicate the general course, incidents, language, and so forth of all these poems. It will be remembered that it ends by a declaration that the king was not grateful to the King-maker. He forgets William in the distribution of fiefs, says M. Gautier; we may say, perhaps, that he remembers rather too vividly the rough instruction he has received from his brother-in-law. On protest William receives Spain, Orange, and Nîmes, a sufficiently magnificent dotation, were it not that all three are in the power of the infidels. William, however, loses no time in putting himself in possession, and begins with Nîmes. This he carries, as told in the Charroi de Nîmes,[38] by the Douglas-like stratagem (indeed it is not at all impossible that the Good Lord James was acquainted with the poem) of hiding his knights in casks, supposed to contain salt and other merchandise, which are piled on cars and drawn by oxen. William himself and Bertrand his nephew conduct the caravan, dressed in rough boots (which hurt Bertrand's feet), blue hose, and coarse cloth frocks. The innocent paynims give them friendly welcome, though William is nearly discovered by his tell-tale disfigurement. A squabble, however, arises; but William, having effected his entrance, does not lose time. He blows his horn, and the knights springing from their casks, the town is taken. This Charroi de Nîmes is one of the most spirited, but one of the roughest, of the group. The catalogue of his services with which William[Pg 72] overwhelms the king, each item ushered by the phrase "Rois, quar te membre" ("King, bethink thee then"), and to which the unfortunate Louis can only answer in various forms, "You are very ill-tempered" ("Pleins es de mautalent"; "Mautalent avez moult"), is curiously full of uncultivated eloquence; while his refusal to accept the heritage of Auberi le Bourgoing, and thereby wrong Auberi's little son, even though "sa marrastre Hermengant de Tori" is also offered by the generous monarch with the odd commendation—

is justly praised. But when the venerable Aymon not unnaturally protests against almost the whole army accompanying William, and the wrathful peer breaks his jaw with his fist, when the peasants who grumble at their casks and their oxen being seized are hanged or have their eyes put out—then the less amiable side of the matter certainly makes its appearance.

William has thus entered on part, though the least part, of the king's gift to him—a gift which it is fair to Louis to say that the hero had himself demanded, after refusing the rather vague offer of a fourth of the lands and revenues of all France. The Prise d'Orange[39] follows in time and as a subject of chanson, the Charroi de Nîmes. The earlier poem had been all sheer fighting with no softer side. In this William is reminded of the beautiful Orable (wife, if only in name, of King Thibaut),[Pg 73] who lives there, though her husband, finding a wife who bewitches the nuptial chamber unsatisfactory, has left her and Orange to the care of his son Arragon. The reminder is a certain Gilbert of Vermandois who has been prisoner at Orange, and who, after some hesitation, joins William himself and his brother Guibelin in a hazardous expedition to the pagan city. They blacken themselves with ink, and are not ill received by Arragon: but a Saracen who knows the "Marquis au Court Nez" informs against him (getting his brains beaten out for his pains), and the three, forcing a way with bludgeons through the heathen, take refuge in Gloriette, receive arms from Orable, who has never ceased to love the Marquis, and drive their enemies off. But a subterranean passage (this probably shows the chanson to be a late one in this form) lets the heathen in: and all three champions are seized, bound, and condemned to the flames. Orable demands them, not to release but to put in her own dungeons, conveniently furnished with vipers; and for a time they think themselves betrayed. But Orable soon appears, offers them liberty if William will marry her, and discloses a second underground passage. They do not, however, fly by this, but only send Gilbert to Nîmes to fetch succour: and as Orable's conduct is revealed to Arragon, a third crisis occurs. It is happily averted, and Bertrand soon arriving with thirteen thousand men from Nîmes, the Saracens are cut to pieces and Orange won. Orable is quickly baptised, her name being changed to Guibourc, and married without further delay. William[Pg 74] is William of Orange at length in good earnest, and the double sacrament reconciles M. Gautier (who is constantly distressed by the forward conduct of his heroines) to Guibourc ever afterwards. It is only fair to say that in the text published by M. Jonckbloët (and M. Gautier gives references to no other) "la curtoise Orable" does not seem to deserve his hard words. There is nothing improper in her conduct, and her words do not come to much more than—

La Prise d'Orange ends with the couplet—

Orange, in short, was a kind of Garde Douloureuse against the infidel: and William well earned his title of "Marchis." The story of his exploits diverges a little—a loop rather than an episode—in two specially heroic chansons, the Enfances Vivien and the Covenant Vivien,[40] which tell the story of one of his nephews, a story finished by Vivien's glorious death at the opening of the great chanson of Aliscans. Vivien is the son of Garin d'Ansène, one of those "children of Aimeri" who have sought fortune away from Narbonne, and one of the captives of Roncesvalles. Garin is only to be delivered at the cost of his son's life, which Vivien cheerfully offers. He is actually on the pyre, which is kindled, when the pagan hold Luiserne is stormed by a pirate king, and[Pg 75] Vivien is rescued, but sold as a slave. An amiable paynim woman buys him and adopts him; but he is a born knight, and when grown up, with a few allies surprises Luiserne itself, and holds it till a French army arrives, and Garin recovers his son, whom he had thought dead. After these Enfances, promising enough, comes the Covenant or vow, never to retreat before the Saracens. Vivien is as savage as he is heroic; and on one occasion sends five hundred prisoners, miserably mutilated, to the great Admiral Desramé. The admiral assembles all the forces of the East as well as of Spain, and invades France. Vivien, overpowered by numbers, applies to his uncle William for help, and the battle of Aliscans is already half fought and more than half lost before the actual chanson of the name begins. Aliscans[41] itself opens with a triplet in which the "steel clash" of the chanson measure is more than ever in place:—

And it continues in the same key. The commentators declare that the story refers to an actual historical battle of Villedaigne. This may be a fact: the literary excellence of Aliscans is one. The scale of the battle is represented as being enormous: and the poet is not unworthy of his subject. Neither is William impar sibi: but his day of un[Pg 76]broken victory is over. No one can resist him personally; but the vast numbers of the Saracens make personal valour useless. Vivien, already hopelessly wounded, fights on, and receives a final blow from a giant. He is able, however, to drag himself to a tree where a fountain flows, and there makes his confession, and prays for his uncle's safety. As for William himself, his army is entirely cut to pieces, and it is only a question whether he can possibly escape. He comes to Vivien's side just as his nephew is dying, bewails him in a very noble passage, receives his last breath, and is able before it passes to administer the holy wafer which he carries with him. It is Vivien's first communion as well as his last.

After this really great scene, one of the finest in all the chansons, William puts the corpse of Vivien on the wounded but still generous Baucent, and endeavours to make his way through the ring of enemies who have held aloof but are determined not to let him go. Night saves him: and though he has to abandon the body, he cuts his way through a weak part of the line, gains another horse (for Baucent can carry him no longer), and just reaches Orange. But he has taken the arms as well as the horse of a pagan to get through his foes: and in this guise he is refused entrance to his own city. Guibourc herself rejects him, and only recognises her husband from the prowess which he shows against the pursuers, who soon catch him up. The gates are opened and he is saved, but Orange is surrounded by the heathen. There is no room to tell the full heroism of Guibourc, and,[Pg 77] besides, Aliscans is one of the best known of the chansons, and has been twice printed.

From this point the general interest of the saga, which has culminated in the battle of Aliscans, though it can hardly be said to disappear, declines somewhat, and is diverted to other persons than William himself. It is decided that Guibourc shall hold Orange, while he goes to the Court of Louis to seek aid. This personal suit is necessary lest the fulness of the overthrow be not believed; and the pair part after a scene less rugged than the usual course of the chansons, in which Guibourc expresses her fear of the "damsels bright of blee," the ladies of high lineage that her husband will meet at Laon; and William swears in return to drink no wine, eat no flesh, kiss no mouth, sleep on his saddle-cloth, and never change his garments till he meets her again.

His reception is not cordial. Louis thinks him merely a nuisance, and the courtiers mock his poverty, distress, and loneliness. He meets with no hospitality save from a citizen. But the chance arrival of his father and mother from Narbonne prevents him from doing anything rash. They have a great train with them, and it is no longer possible simply to ignore William; but from the king downwards, there is great disinclination to grant him succour, and Queen Blanchefleur is especially hostile. William is going to cut her head off—his usual course of action when annoyed—after actually addressing her in a speech of extreme directness, somewhat resembling[Pg 78] Hamlet's to Gertrude, but much ruder. Their mother saves Blanchefleur, and after she has fled in terror to her chamber, the fair Aelis, her daughter, a gracious apparition, begs and obtains forgiveness from William, short of temper as of nose, but also not rancorous. Reconciliation takes place all round, and an expedition is arranged for the relief of Orange. It is successful, but chiefly owing to the prowess, not of William, but of a certain Renouart, who is the special hero, not merely of the last half of Aliscans, but of nearly all the later chansons of the geste of Garin de Montglane. This Renouart or Rainouart is an example, and one of the earliest, perhaps the very earliest, of the type of hero, so dear to the middle ages, who begins by service in the kitchen or elsewhere, of no very dignified character, and ends by being discovered to be of noble or royal birth. Rainouart is thus the ancestor, and perhaps the direct ancestor, of Havelok, whom he especially resembles; of Beaumains, in a hitherto untraced episode of the Arthurian story, and of others. His early feats against the Saracens, in defence of Orange first, and then when William arrives, are made with no knightly weapon, but with a tinel—huge bludgeon, beam, "caber"—but he afterwards turns out to be Guibourc's, or rather Orable's, own brother. There are very strong comic touches in all this part of the poem, such as the difficulty Rainouart finds in remounting his comrades, the seven nephews of William, because his tinel blows are so swashing that they simply smash horse and man—a difficulty[Pg 79] overcome by the ingenious suggestion of Bertrand that he shall hit with the small end. And these comic touches have a little disturbed those who wish to find in the pure chanson de geste nothing but war and religion, honour and generosity. But, as has been already hinted, this is to be over-nice. No doubt the oldest existing, or at least the oldest yet discovered, MS. of Aliscans is not the original, for it is rhymed, not assonanced, a practically infallible test. But there is no reason to suppose that the comic touches are all new, though they may have been a little amplified in the later version. Once more, it is false argument to evolve the idea of a chanson from Roland only, and then to insist that all chansons shall conform to it.

After the defeat of Desramé, and the relief of half-ruined Orange, the troubles of that city and its Count are not over. The admiral returns to the charge, and the next chanson, the Bataille Loquifer, is ranked by good judges as ancient, and describes fresh prowess of Rainouart. Then comes the Moniage ["Monking" of] Rainouart, in which the hero, like so many other heroes, takes the cowl. This, again, is followed by a series describing chiefly the reprisals in Spain and elsewhere of the Christians—Foulques de Candie, the Siège de Barbastre, the Prise de Cordres, and Gilbert d'Andrenas. And at last the whole geste is wound up by the Mort Aimeri de Narbonne, Renier, and the Moniage Guillaume, the poem which unites the profane history of the Marquis au Court Nez to the legend of St William of the Desert, though in a fashion sometimes[Pg 80] odd. M. Gautier will not allow any of these poems (except the Bataille Loquifer and the two Moniages) great age; and even if it were otherwise, and more of them were directly accessible,[42] there could be no space to say much of them here. The sketch given should be sufficient to show the general characteristics of the chansons as each is in itself, and also the curious and ingenious way in which their successive authors have dovetailed and pieced them together into continuous family chronicles.

If these delights can move any one, they may be found almost universally distributed about the chansons. Of the minor groups the most interesting and considerable are the crusading cycle, late as it is in part, and that of the Lorrainers, which is, in the main, very early. Of the former the Chansons d'Antioche and de Jérusalem are almost historical, and are pretty certainly based on the account of an actual partaker. Antioche in particular has few superiors in the whole hundred and more poems of the kind. Hélias ties this historic matter on to legend proper by introducing the story of the Knight of the Swan; while Les Chétifs (The Captives) combines history and legend very interestingly, starting as it does with a probably historical capture of certain Christians, who are then plunged in dreamland of romance for the rest of it. The concluding poems of this cycle, Baudouin de Sebourc and the Bastart de Bouillon, have been already more[Pg 81] than once mentioned. They show, as has been said, the latest form of the chanson, and are almost pure fiction, though they have a sort of framework or outline in the wars in Northern Arabia, at and round the city of Jôf, whose crusading towers still, according to travellers, look down on the hadj route through the desert. Garin le Loherain, on the other hand, and its successors, are pure early feudal fighting, as is also the early, excellent, and very characteristic Raoul de Cambrai. These are instances, and no doubt not the only ones, of what may be called district or provincial gestes, applying the principles of the chansons generally to local quarrels and fortunes.

Of what purists call the sophisticated chansons, those in which general romance-motives of different kinds are embroidered on the strictly chanson canvas, there are probably none more interesting than the later forms of Huon de Bordeaux and Ogier de Danemarche. The former, since the fortunate reprinting of Lord Berners's version by the Early English Text Society, is open to every one, though, of course, the last vestiges of chanson form have departed, and those who can should read it as edited in M. Guessard's series. The still more gracious legend, in which the ferocious champion Ogier, after his early triumphs over the giant Caraheu and against the paladins of Charles, is, like Huon, brought to the loadstone rock, is then subjected to the enchantments—loving, and now not baneful—of Arthur's sister Morgane, and tears himself from fairyland to come to the rescue of France, is by far the most delightful of the attempts to[Pg 82] "cross" the Arthurian and Carlovingian cycles. And of this we fortunately have in English a poetical version from the great trouvère among the poets of our day, the late Mr William Morris. Of yet others, the often-mentioned Voyage à Constantinoble, with its rather unseemly gabz (boasting jests of the peers, which are overheard by the heathen emperor with results which seem like at one time to be awkward), is among the oldest, and is a warning against the tendency to take the presence of comic elements as a necessary evidence of late date. Les Saisnes, dealing with the war against the Saxons, is a little loose in its morals, but vigorous and interesting. The pleasant pair of Aiol and Elie de St Gilles; the touching history of Charlemagne's mother, Berte aus grans Piés; Acquin, one of the rare chansons dealing with Brittany (though Roland was historically count thereof); Gérard de Roussillon, which has more than merely philological interest; Macaire, already mentioned; the famous Quatre Fils d'Aymon, longest and most widely popular, must be added to the list, and are not all that should be added to it.

On the whole, I must repeat that the chansons de geste, which as we have them are the work of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in the main, form the second division in point of literary value of early mediæval literature, while they possess, in a certain "sincerity and strength," qualities not to be found even in the Arthurian story itself. Despite the ardour with which they have been philologically studied for nearly three-quarters of a[Pg 83] century, despite (or perhaps because of) the enthusiasm which one or two devotees have shown for their literary qualities, it does not seem to me that fair justice, or anything like it, has yet been generally done. German critics care little for literary merit, and are perhaps not often trained to appreciate it; in England the chansons have been strangely little read. But the most singular thing is the cold reception, slightly if at all thawed recently, which they have met in France itself. It may give serious pause to the very high estimate generally entertained of French criticism by foreigners to consider this coldness, which once reached something like positive hostility in M. Ferdinand Brunetière, the chief French literary critic of our generation. I regret to see that M. Lanson, the latest historian of French literature, has not dared to separate himself from the academic grex. "On ne saurait nier," he says, "que quelques uns aient eu du talent;" but he evidently feels that this generous concession is in need of guards and caveats. There is no "beauté formelle" in them, he says—no formal beauty in those magnificently sweeping laisses, of which the ear that has once learnt their music can no more tire thereafter than of the sound of the sea itself. The style (and if it be objected that his previous words have been directly addressed to the later chansons and chanson writers, here he expressly says that this style "est le même style que dans le Roland," though "moins sobre, moins plein, moins sur") has "no beauty by itself," and finally he thinks that the best thing to do is "to let nine-tenths of the chansons follow nine-[Pg 84]tenths of our tragedies." I have read many chansons and many tragedies; but I have never read a chanson that has not more poetry in it than ninety-nine French tragedies out of a hundred.

The fact is that it is precisely the beauté formelle, assisted as it is by the peculiar spirit of which so much has been said already, which constitutes the beauty of these poems: and that these characteristics are present, not of course in uniform measure, but certainly in the great majority of the chansons from Roland to the Bastard. Of course if a man sits down with a preconceived idea of an epic poem, it is more likely than not that his preconceived idea will be of something very different from a chanson de geste. And if, refusing to depart from his preconceived idea, and making that idea up of certain things taken from the Iliad, certain from the Æneid, certain from the Divina Commedia, certain from Paradise Lost,—if he runs over the list and says to the chanson, "Are you like Homer in this point? Can you match me Virgil in that?" the result will be that the chanson will fail to pass its examination.

But if, with some knowledge of literature in the wide sense, and some love for it, he sits down to take the chansons as they are, and judge them on their merits and by the law of their own poetical state, then I think he will come to a very different conclusion. He will say that their kind is a real kind, a thing by itself, something of which if it were not, nothing else in literature could precisely supply the want. And he will decide further that while the best[Pg 85] of them are remarkably good of their kind, few of them can be called positively bad in it. And yet again, if he has been fortunately gifted by nature with that appreciation of form which saves the critic from mere prejudice and crotchet, from mere partiality, he will, I believe, go further still, and say that while owing something to spirit, they owe most to form itself, to the form of the single-assonanced or mono-rhymed tirade, assisted as it is by the singular beauty of Old French in sound, and more particularly by the sonorous recurring phrases of the chanson dialect. No doubt much instruction and some amusement can be got out of these poems as to matters of fact: no doubt some passages in Roland, in Aliscans, in the Couronnement Loys, have a stern beauty of thought and sentiment which deserves every recognition. But these things are not all-pervading, and they can be found elsewhere: the clash and clang of the tirade are everywhere here, and can be found nowhere else.

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