The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory

By George Saintsbury

[Pg 265]

CHAPTER VII.

THE ‘FOX,’ THE ‘ROSE,’ AND THE MINOR
CONTRIBUTIONS OF FRANCE.

The predominance of France. The rise of Allegory. Lyric. The Romance and the Pastourelle. The Fabliaux. Their origin. Their licence. Their wit. Definition and subjects. Effect of the fabliaux on language. And on narrative. Conditions of fabliau-writing. The appearance of irony. Fables proper. Reynard the Fox. Order of texts. Place of origin. The French form. Its complications. Unity of spirit. The Rise of Allegory. The satire of Renart. The Fox himself. His circle. The burial of Renart. The Romance of the Rose. William of Lorris and Jean de Meung. The first part. Its capital value. The rose-garden. "Danger." "Reason." "Shame" and "Scandal." The later poem. "False-Seeming." Contrast of the parts. Value of both, and charm of the first. Marie de France and Rutebœuf. Drama. Adam de la Halle. Robin et Marion. The Jeu de la Feuillie. Comparison of them. Early French prose. Laws and sermons. Villehardouin. William of Tyre. Joinville. Fiction. Aucassin et Nicolette

The contributions of France to European literature mentioned in the three chapters (II.-IV.) which deal with the three main sections of Romance, great as we have seen them to be, by no[Pg 266] means exhausted the debt which literature owes to her during this period. It is indeed not a little curious that the productions of this time, long almost totally ignored in France itself, and even now rather grudgingly acknowledged there, are the only periodic set of productions that justify the claim, so often advanced by Frenchmen, that their country is at the head of the literary development of Europe. It was not so in the fourteenth century, when not only Chaucer in England, but Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio in Italy, attained literary heights to which none of their French contemporaries even approached. It was not so in the fifteenth, when France, despite Villon and others, was the very School of Dulness, and even England, with the help of the Scottish poets and Malory, had a slight advantage over her, while she was far outstripped by Italy. It was not so in the sixteenth, when Italy hardly yet fell behind, and Spain and England far outwent her: nor, according to any just estimate, in the seventeenth. In the eighteenth her pale correctness looks faint enough, not merely beside the massive strength of England, but beside the gathering force of Germany: and if she is the equal of the best in the nineteenth, it is at the very most a bare equality. But in the twelfth and thirteenth France, if not Paris, was in reality the eye and brain of Europe, the place of origin of almost every literary form, the place of finishing and polishing, even for those forms which she did not originate. She not merely taught, she wrought—and wrought consummately. She revived and transformed[Pg 267] the fable; perfected, if she did not invent, the beast-epic; brought the short prose tale to an exquisite completeness; enlarged, suppled, chequered, the somewhat stiff and monotonous forms of Provençal lyric into myriad-noted variety; devised the prose-memoir, and left capital examples of it; made attempts at the prose history; ventured upon much and performed no little in the vernacular drama; besides the vast performance, sometimes inspired from elsewhere but never as literature copied, which we have already seen, in her fostering if not mothering of Romance. When a learned and enthusiastic Icelander speaks of his patrimony in letters as "a native literature which, in originality, richness, historical and artistic worth, stands unrivalled in modern Europe," we can admire the patriot but must shake our heads at the critic. For by Dr Vigfusson's own confession the strength of Icelandic literature consists in the sagas, and the sagas are the product of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. At that very time France, besides the chansons de geste—as native, as original, as the sagas, and if less rich, far more artistic in form—France has to show the great romances proper, which Iceland herself, like all the world, copied, a lyric of wonderful charm and abundance, the vast comic wealth of the fabliaux, and the Fox-epic, prose not merely of laws and homilies and rudimentary educational subjects, but of every variety, drama, history, philosophy, allegory, dream.

To give an account of these various things in great detail would not merely be impossible here, but would[Pg 268] injure the scheme and thwart the purpose of this history. We must survey them in the gross, or with a few examples—showing the lessons taught and the results achieved, from the lyric, which was probably the earliest, to the drama and the prose story, which were pretty certainly the latest of the French experiments. But we must give largest space to the singular growth of Allegory. This, to some extent in the beast-epic, to a far greater in one of the most epoch-making of European books, the Romance of the Rose, set a fashion in Europe which had hardly passed away in three hundred years, and which, latterly rather for the worse, but in the earlier date not a little for the better, coloured not merely the work directly composed in imitation of the great originals, but all literary stuff of every kind, from lyric to drama, and from sermons to prose tales.

It has been said elsewhere that the shaping of a prosody suitable for lyric was the great debt which Europe owes to the language of Provence. And this is not at all inconsistent with the undoubted critical fact that in a Corpus Lyricorum the best songs of the northern tongues would undoubtedly rank higher, according to all sound canons of poetical criticism, than the best lyrics of the southern. For, as it happens, we have lyrics in at least two most vigorous northern tongues before they had gone to school to southern prosody, and we can see at once the defects in them. The scanty remains of Anglo-Saxon lyric and the more copious remains of Icelandic[Pg 269] display, with no little power and pathos, and plenty of ill-organised "cry," an almost total lack of ability to sing. Every now and then their natural genius enables them to hit, clumsily and laboriously, on something—the refrain of the Complaint of Deor, the stepped stanzas of the Lesson of Loddfafni—resembling the more accomplished methods of more educated and long-descended literatures. But the poets are always in a Robinson Crusoe condition, and worse: for Robinson had at least seen the tools and utensils he needed, if he did not know how to make them. The scôps and scalds were groping for the very pattern of the tools themselves.

The langue d'oc, first of all vernacular tongues, borrowed from Latin, as Latin had borrowed from Greek, such of the practical outcomes of the laws of lyric harmony in Aryan speech as were suitable to itself; and passed the lesson on to the trouvères of the north of France—if indeed these did not work out the transfer for themselves almost independently. And as there was much more northern admixture, and in particular a less tyrannous softness of vowel-ending in the langue d'oïl, this second stage saw a great increase of suppleness, a great emancipation from monotony, a wonderful freshness and wealth of colour and form. It has been said, and I see no reason to alter the saying, that the French tongue in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was actually better suited for lyrical poetry, and did actually produce lyrical poetry, as far as prosody is concerned, of a fresher, freer, more spontaneous kind, from the twelfth century to the[Pg 270] beginning of the fifteenth than has ever been the case since.[124]

M. Alfred Jeanroy has written a learned and extensive monograph on Les Origines de la Poesie Lyrique en France, which with M. Gaston Raynaud's Bibliographie des Chansonniers Français, and his collection of Motets of our present period, is indispensable to the thorough student of the subject.[125] But for general literary purposes the two classics of the matter are, and are long likely to be, the charming Romancero Français[126] which M. Paulin Paris published in the very dawn of the study of mediæval literature in France, and the admirable Romanzen und Pastourellen[127] which Herr Karl Bartsch collected and issued a quarter of a century ago. Here as elsewhere the piecemeal system of publication which has been the bane of the whole subject is to be regretted, for with a little effort and a little division of labour the entire corpus of French lyric from the tenth to the fourteenth century might have been easily set before the public. But the two volumes above mentioned will enable the reader to judge its general characteristics with pretty absolute sureness; and if he desires to supplement them with the work of a single author, that of Thibaut of Cham[Pg 271]pagne or Navarre,[128] which is easily accessible, will form an excellent third.

In this northern lyric—that is to say, northern as compared with Provençal[129]—we find all or almost all the artificial forms which are characteristic of Provençal itself, some of them no doubt rather sisters than daughters of their analogues in the langue d'oc. Indeed, at the end of our present period, and still more later, the ingenuity of the trouvères seems to have pushed the strictly formal, strictly artificial part of the poetry of the troubadours to almost its furthest possible limits in varieties of triolet and rondeau, ballade and chant royal. But the Romances and the Pastourelles stand apart from these, and both are recognised by authorities among the troubadours themselves as specially northern forms. The differentia of each is in subject rather than in form, the "romance" in this sense being a short love-story, with little more than a single incident in it sometimes, but still always possessing an incident; the Pastourelle, a special variety of love-story of the kind so curiously popular in all mediæval languages, and so curiously alien from modern experience, where a passing knight sees a damsel of low degree, and woos her at once, with or without success, or where two personages of the shepherd kind sue and are sued with evil hap or good. In other words, the "romance" is supremely presented in English, and in the much-abused fifteenth century, by the Nut-Browne Maid, the[Pg 272] "pastourelle" by Henryson's Robene and Makyne. Perhaps there is nothing quite so good as either in the French originals of both; certainly there is nothing like the union of metrical felicity, romantic conduct, sweet but not mawkish sentiment, and never-flagging interest in the anonymous masterpiece which the ever-blessed Arnold preserved for us in his Chronicle. But the diffused merits—the so-to-speak "class-merits"—of the poems in general are very high indeed: and when the best of the other lyrics—aubades, débats, and what not—are joined to them, they supply the materials of an anthology of hardly surpassed interest, as well for the bubbling music of their refrains and the trill of their metre, as for the fresh mirth and joy of living in their matter. The "German paste in our composition," as another Arnold had it, and not only that, may make us prefer the German examples; but it must never be forgotten that but for these it is at least not improbable that those would never have existed.

To select capital examples from so large a body is no easy task. One or two, indeed, have "made fortune," the most famous of them being the great aubade (chief among its kind, as "En un vergier sotz folha d'albespi" is among the Provençal albas), which begins—

and where the gaite (watcher) answers (like a Cornish watcher of the pilchards)—

Then there is the group, among the oldest and the best of all, assigned to Audefroy le Bâtard—a most delectable garland, which tells how the loves of Gerard and Fair Isabel are delayed (with the refrain "et joie atent Gerars"), and how the joy comes at last; of "belle Ydoine" and her at first ill-starred passion for "li cuens [the Count] Garsiles"; of Béatrix and Guy; of Argentine, whose husband better loved another; of Guy the second, who aima Emmelot de foi—all charming pieces of early verse. And then there are hundreds of others, assigned or anonymous, in every tone, from the rather unreasonable request of the lady who demands—

immediately answering her own question by confessing that he has found her embracing her lover, and threatening further justification; through the less impudent but still not exactly correct morality of "Henri and Aiglentine," to the blameless loves of Roland and "Bele Erembors" and the moniage of "Bele Doette" after her lover's death, with the words—

This conduct differs sufficiently from that of the un[Pg 274]named heroine of another song, who in the sweetest and smoothest of verse bids her husband never to mind if she stays with her lover that night, for the night is very short, and he, the husband, shall have her back to-morrow!

And besides the morality, perverse or touching, the quaint manners, the charming unusual names or forms of names, Oriour, Oriolanz, Ysabiaus, Aigline,—there are delightful fancies, borrowed often since:—

Something in the very sound of the language keeps for us the freshness of the imagery—the sweet-briar and the hawthorn, the mavis and the oriole—which has so long become publica materies. It is not withered and hackneyed by time and tongues as, save when genius touches it, it is now. The dew is still on all of it; and, thanks to the dead language, the dead manners, it will always be on. All is just near enough to us for it to be enjoyed, as we cannot enjoy antiquity or the East; and yet the "wall of glass" which seven centuries interpose, while hiding nothing, keeps all intact, unhackneyed, strange, fresh. There may be better poetry in the world than these twelfth and thirteenth century French lyrics: there is certainly higher, grander, more respectable. But I doubt whether there is any sweeter or, in a certain[Pg 275] sense, more poignant. The nightingale and the mermaid were justified of their children.

It is little wonder that all Europe soon tried to imitate notes so charming, and in some cases, though other languages were far behind French in development, tried successfully. Our own "Alison,"[131] the first note of true English lyric, is a "romance" of the most genuine kind; the songs of Walther von der Vogelweide, of which we have also spoken, though they may rise higher, yet owe their French originals service, hold of them, would either never or much later have come into existence but for them. An astonishing privilege for a single nation to have enjoyed, if only for a short time; a privilege almost more astonishing in its reception than even in itself. France could point to the chansons and to the romances, to Audefroy le Bastard and Chrestien of Troyes, to Villehardouin and Thibaut, to William of Lorris and John of Meung, to the fabliaux writers and the cyclists of Renart, in justification of her claims. She shut them up; she forgot them; she sneered at them whenever they were remembered; and she appointed as her attorneys in the court of Parnassus Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux and François Arouet de Voltaire!

No more curious contrast, but also none which could more clearly show the enormous vigour and the unique variety of the French genius at this time, can be imagined than that which is presented by the next division to which we come—the division occupied by the celebrated poems, or at least[Pg 276] verse-compositions, known as fabliaux. These, for reasons into which it is perhaps better not to inquire too closely, have been longer and better known than any other division of old French poetry. They were first collected and published a hundred and forty years ago by Barbazan; they were much commented on by Le Grand d'Aussy in the last years of the last century, were again published in the earlier years of the present by Méon, and recently have been re-collected, divested of some companions not strictly of their kind, and published in an edition desirable in every respect by M. Anatole de Montaiglon and M. Gaston Raynaud.[132] Since this collection M. Bédier has executed a monograph upon them which stands to the subject much as that of M. Jeanroy does to the Lyrics. But a great deal of it is occupied by speculations, more interesting to the folk-lorist than to the student of literature, as to the origin of the stories themselves. This, though a question of apparently inexhaustible attraction to some people, must not occupy us very long here. It shall be enough to say that many of these subjects are hardy perennials which meet us in all literatures, and the existence of which is more rationally to be accounted for by the supposition of a certain common form of story, resulting partly from the conditions of human life and character, partly from the conformation of the human intellect, than by supposing deliberate transmission and copying from one nation to another. For this latter explanation is one of those which, as has been said, only push ignorance further[Pg 277] back; and in fact, leave us at the last with no alternative except that which we might have adopted at the first.

That, however, some assistance may have been given to the general tendency to produce the same forms by the literary knowledge of earlier, especially Eastern, collections of tales is no extravagant supposition, and is helped by the undoubted fact that actual translations of such collections—Dolopathos, the Seven Sages of Rome,[133] and so forth—are found early in French, and chiefly at second-hand from the French in other languages. But the general tendency of mankind, reinforced and organised by a certain specially literary faculty and adaptability in the French genius, is on the whole sufficient to account for the fabliau.

It presents, as we have said, the most striking and singular contrast to the Lyric poems which we have just noticed. The technical morality of these is extremely accommodating, indeed (in its conventional and normal form) very low. But it is redeemed by an exquisite grace and charm, by true passion, and also by a great decency and accomplishment of actual diction. Coarse language—very rare in the romances, though there are a few examples of it—is rarer still in the elaborate formal lyric of the twelfth and thirteenth century in French. In the[Pg 278] fabliaux, which are only a very little later, and which seem not to have been a favourite form of composition very long after the fourteenth century had reached its prime, coarseness of diction, though not quite invariable, is the rule. Not merely are the subjects, in the majority of cases, distinctly "broad," but the treatment of them is broader still. In a few instances it is very hard to discern any wit at all, except a kind similar to that known much later in England as "selling bargains"; and almost everywhere the words which, according to a famous classical French tag, bravent l'honnêteté, in Latin, the use of which a Roman poet has vaunted as Romana simplicitas, and which for some centuries have been left alone by regular literature in all European languages till very recently,—appear to be introduced on purpose as part of the game. In fact, it is in the fabliau that the characteristic which Mr Matthew Arnold selected as the opprobrium of the French in life and literature practically makes its first appearance. And though the "lubricity" of these poems is free from some ugly features which appear after the Italian wars of the late fifteenth century, it has never been more frankly destitute of shamefacedness.

It would, however, be extremely unfair to let it be supposed that the fabliaux contain nothing but obscenity, or that they can offer attractions to no one save those whom obscenity attracts. As in those famous English followings of them, where Chaucer considerably reduced the licence of language, and still more considerably increased the dose of wit[Pg 279]—the Reeve's and Miller's sections of the Canterbury Tales—the lack of decency is very often accompanied by no lack of sense. And a certain proportion, including some of the very best in a literary point of view, are not exposed to the charge of any impropriety either of language or of subject.

There is, indeed, no special reason why the fabliau should be "improper" (except for the greater ease of getting a laugh) according to its definition, which is capable of being drawn rather more sharply than is always the case with literary kinds. It is a short tale in verse—almost invariably octosyllabic couplets—dealing, for the most part from the comic point of view, with incidents of ordinary life. This naturally admits of the widest possible diversity of subject: indeed it is only by sticking to the condition of "ordinary life" that the fabliau can be differentiated from the short romance on one side and the allegoric beast-fable on the other. Even as it is, its most recent editors have admitted among their 157 examples not a few which are simple jeux d'esprit on the things of humanity, and others which are in effect short romances and nothing else. Of these last is the best known of all the non-Rabelaisian fabliaux, "Le Vair Palefroi," which has been Englished by Leigh Hunt and shortly paraphrased by Peacock, while examples of the former may be found without turning very long over even one of M. M. de Montaiglon and Raynaud's pretty and learned volumes. A very large proportion, as might be expected, draw their comic interest from satire on priests, on women, or on[Pg 280] both together; and this very general character of the fabliaux (which, it must be remembered, were performed or recited by the very same jongleurs who conducted the publication of the chansons de geste and the romances) was no doubt partly the result and partly the cause of the persistent dislike and disfavour with which the Church regarded the profession of jonglerie. It is, indeed, from the fabliaux themselves that we learn much of what we know about the jongleurs; and one of not the least amusing[134] deals with the half-clumsy, half-satiric boasts of two members of the order, who misquote the titles of their répertoire, make by accident or intention ironic comments on its contents, and in short do not magnify their office in a very modern spirit of humorous writing.

Every now and then, too, we find, in the half-random and wholly scurrile slander of womankind, a touch of real humour, of the humour that has feeling behind it, as here, where a sufficiently ribald variation on the theme of the "Ephesian matron" ends—

So too, again, in "La Housse Partie," a piece which perhaps ranks next to the "Vair Palefroi" in general[Pg 281] estimation, there is neither purely romantic interest, as in the Palfrey, nor the interest of "the pity of it," as in the piece just quoted; but an ethical purpose, showing out of the mouth of babes and sucklings the danger of filial ingratitude.

But, as a general rule, there is little that is serious in these frequently graceless but generally amusing compositions. There is a curious variety about them, and incidentally a crowd of lively touches of common life. The fisherman of the Seine starts for his day's work or sport with oar and tackle; the smith plies the forge; the bath plays a considerable part in the stories, and we learn that it was not an unknown habit to eat when bathing, which seems to be an unwise attempt to double luxuries. A short sketch of mediæval catering might be got out of the fabliaux, where figure not merely the usual dainties—capons, partridges, pies well peppered—but eels salted, dried, and then roasted, or more probably grilled, as we grill kippered salmon. Here we have a somewhat less grimy original—perhaps it was actually the original—of Skelton's "Tunning of Elinor Rumming"; and in many places other patterns, the later reproductions of which are well known to readers of Boccaccio and the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles of La Fontaine and his followers. Title after title—"Du Prestre Crucifié," "Du Prestre et d'Alison," &c.—tells us that the clergy are going to be lampooned. Sometimes, where the fun is no worse than childish, it is childish enough—plays on words, jokes on English mispronunciation of French, and so forth. But it very seldom, though it[Pg 282] is sometimes intolerably nasty, approaches the sheer drivel which appears in some English would-be comic writing of the Middle Ages, or the very early Renaissance—such, for instance, as most of that in the prose "Pleasant Historie of Thomas of Reading,"[135] which the late Mr Thoms was pleased to call a romance. Yet the actual stuff of "Thomas of Reading" is very much of the nature of the fabliaux (except of course the tragical part, which happens to be the only good part), and so the difference of the handling is noteworthy. So it is also in English verse-work of the kind—the "Hunting of the Hare"[136] and the like—to take examples necessarily a little later than our time.

For in these curious compositions the esprit Gaulois found itself completely at home; indeed some have held that here it hit upon its most characteristic and peculiar development. The wonderful faculty for expression—for giving, if not the supreme, yet the adequate and technically masterly dress to any kind of literary production—which has been the note of French literature throughout, and which was never more its note than at this time, enabled the language, as we have seen and shall see, to keep as by an easy sculling movement far ahead of all its competitors. But in other departments, with one or two exceptions, the union of temper and craft, of[Pg 283] inspiration and execution, was not quite perfect. Here there was no misalliance. As the language lost the rougher, fresher music which gives such peculiar attraction to the chansons, as it disused itself to the varied trills, the half-inarticulate warblings which constitute the charm of the lyrics, so it acquired the precision, the flexibility, the netteté, which satiric treatment of the follies and evil chances of life, the oddities of manners and morals, require. It became bright, if a little hard, easy, if a little undistinguished, capable of slyness, of innuendo, of "malice," but not quite so capable as it had been of the finer and vaguer suggestions and aspirations.

Above all, these fabliaux served as an exercise-ground for the practice in which French was to become almost if not quite supreme, the practice of narrative. In the longer romances, which for a century or a century and a half preceded the fabliaux, the art of narration, as has been more than once noticed, was little attended to, and indeed had little scope. The chansons had a common form, or something very like it, which almost dispensed the trouvère from devoting much pains to the individual conduct of the story. The most abrupt transitions were accustomed, indeed expected; minor incidents received very little attention; the incessant fighting secured the attention of the probable hearers by itself; the more grandiose and striking incidents—the crowning of Prince Louis and the indignation of William at his sister's ingratitude,[Pg 284] for instance—were not "engineered" or led up to in any way, but left to act in mass and by assault.

The smaller range and more delicate—however indelicate—argument of the fabliaux not only invited but almost necessitated a different kind of handling. The story had to draw to point in (on an average) two or three hundred lines at most—there are fabliaux of a thousand lines, and fabliaux of thirty or forty, but the average is as just stated. The incidents had to be adjusted for best effect, neither too many nor too few. The treatment had to be mainly provocative—an appeal in some cases by very coarse means indeed to very coarse nerves, in others by finer devices addressed to senses more tickle o' the sere. And so grew up that unsurpassed and hardly matched product the French short story, where, if it is in perfection, hardly a word is thrown away, and not a word missed that is really wanted.

The great means for doing this in literature is irony; and irony appears in the fabliaux as it had hardly done since Lucian. Take, for instance, this opening of a piece, the rest of which is at least as irreverent, considerably less quotable, but not much less pointed:—

What two orders were left, and how the difficulty of there being nothing left for them was got over, may be found by the curious in the seventy-sixth fabliau of the third volume of the collection so often quoted. But the citation given will show that there is nothing surprising in the eighteenth-century history, literary or poetical, of a country which could produce such a piece, certainly not later than the thirteenth. Even Voltaire could not put the thing more neatly or with a more complete freedom from superfluous words.

It will doubtless have been observed that the fabliau—though the word is simply fabula in one of its regular Romance metamorphoses, and though the method is sufficiently Æsopic—is not a "fable" in the sense more especially assigned to the term. Yet the mediæval languages, especially French and Latin, were by no means destitute of fables properly so called. On the contrary, it would appear that it was precisely during our present period that the rather meagre Æsopisings of Phædrus and Babrius were expanded into the fuller collection of beast-stories which exists in various forms, the chief of them being the Ysopet (the name generally given to the class in Romance) of Marie de France,[Pg 286] the somewhat later Lyoner Ysopet (as its editor, Dr Förster, calls it), and the original of this latter, the Latin elegiacs of the so-called Anonymus Neveleti.[137] The collection of Marie is interesting, at least, because of the author, whose more famous Lais, composed, it would seem, at the Court of Henry III. of England about the meeting of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and forming a sort of offshoot less of the substance of the Arthurian story than of its spirit, are among the most delightful relics of mediæval poetry. But the Lyons book perhaps exhibits more of the characteristic which, evident enough in the fabliau proper, discovers, after passing as by a channel through the beast-fable, its fullest and most famous form in the world-renowned Romance of Reynard the Fox, one of the capital works of the Middle Ages, and with the sister but contrasted Romance of the Rose, as much the distinguishing literary product of the thirteenth century as the romances proper—Carlovingian, Arthurian, and Classical—are of the twelfth.

Not, of course, that the antiquity of the Reynard story itself[138] does not mount far higher than the thirteenth century. No two things are more remarkable[Pg 287] as results of that comparative and simultaneous study of literature, to which this series hopes to give some little assistance, than the way in which, on the one hand, a hundred years seem to be in the Middle Ages but a day, in the growth of certain kinds, and on the other a day sometimes appears to do the work of a hundred years. We have seen how in the last two or three decades of the twelfth century the great Arthurian legend seems suddenly to fill the whole literary scene, after being previously but a meagre chronicler's record or invention. The growth of the Reynard story, though to some extent contemporaneous, was slower; but it was really the older of the two. Before the middle of this century, as we have seen, there was really no Arthurian story worthy the name; it would seem that by that time the Reynard legend had already taken not full but definite form in Latin, and there is no reasonable reason for scepticism as to its existence in vernacular tradition, though perhaps not in vernacular writing, for many years, perhaps for more than one century, earlier.

It was not to be expected but that so strange, so interesting, and so universally popular a story as that of King Noble and his not always loving subjects, should have been made, as usual, the battle-ground of literary fancy and of that general tendency of mankind to ferocity, which, unluckily, the study of belles lettres does not seem very appreciably to soften. Assisted by the usual fallacy of antedating MSS. in the early days of palæographic study, and by their prepossessions as Germans, some early students[Pg 288] of the Reynard story made out much too exclusive and too early claims, as to possession by right of invention, for the country in which Reynard has no doubt, for the last four centuries or so, been much more of a really popular hero than anywhere else. Investigation and comparison, however, have had more healing effects here than in other cases; and since the acknowledgment of the fact that the very early Middle High German version of Henry the Glichezare, itself of the end of the twelfth century, is a translation from the French, there has not been much serious dispute about the order of the Reynard romances as we actually have them. That is to say, if the Latin Isengrimus—the oldest Reinardus Vulpes—of 1150 or thereabouts is actually the oldest text, the older branches of the French Renart pretty certainly come next, with the High German following a little later, and the Low German Reincke de Vos and the Flemish Reinaert a little later still. The Southern Romance nations do not seem—indeed the humour is essentially Northern—to have adopted Reynard with as much enthusiasm as they showed towards the Romances; and our English forms were undoubtedly late adaptations from foreign originals.

If, however, this account of the texts may be said to be fairly settled, the same cannot of course be said as to the origin of the story. Here there are still champions of the German claim, whose number is increased by those who stickle for a definite "Low" German origin. Some French patriots, with a stronger case than they generally have, still[Pg 289] maintain the story to be purely French in inception. I have not myself seen any reason to change the opinion I formed some fifteen years ago, to the effect that it seems likely that the original language of the epic is French, but French of a Walloon or Picard dialect, and that it was written somewhere between the Seine and the Rhine.

The character and accomplishment of the story, however, are matters of much more purely literary interest than the rather barren question of the probable—it is not likely that it will ever be the proved—date or place of origin of this famous thing. The fable in general, and the beast-fable in particular, are among the very oldest and most universal of the known forms of literature. A fresh and special development of it might have taken place in any country at any time. It did, as a matter of fact, take place somewhere about the twelfth century or earlier, and somewhere in the central part of the northern coast district of the old Frankish empire.

As usual with mediæval work, when it once took hold on the imagination of writers and hearers, the bulk is very great, especially in the French forms, which, taking them altogether, cannot fall much short of a hundred thousand lines. This total, however, includes developments—Le Couronnement Renart, Renart le Nouvel, and, later than our present period, a huge and still not very well-known thing called Renart le Contrefait, which are distinct additions to the first conception of the story. Yet even that first conception is not a story in the single sense.[Pg 290] Its thirty thousand lines or thereabouts are divided into a considerable number of what are called branches, attributed to authors sometimes anonymous, sometimes named, but never, except in the one case of Renart le Bestourné, known.[139] And it is always difficult and sometimes impossible to determine in what relation these branches stand to the main trunk, or which of them is the main trunk. The two editors of the Roman, Méon and Herr Martin, arrange them in different orders; and I do not think it would be in the least difficult to make out a good case for an order, or even a large number of orders, different still.[140]

By comparison, however, with the versions in other languages, it seems not very doubtful that the complaint of Isengrim the Wolf as to the outrages committed by Reynard on the complainant's personal comfort, and the honour of Hersent his wife—a complaint laid formally before King Noble the Lion—forms, so far as any single thing can be said to form it, the basis and beginning of the Reynard story. The multiplication of complaints by other beasts, the sufferings inflicted by Reynard on the messengers sent to summon him to Court, and his escapes, by mixture of fraud and force, when he is no longer able to avoid putting in an appearance, supply the natural continuation.[Pg 291]

But from this, at least in the French versions, the branches diverge, cross, and repeat or contradict each other with an altogether bewildering freedom. Sometimes, for long passages together, as in the interesting fytte, "How Reynard hid himself among the Skins,"[141] the author seems to forget the general purpose altogether, and to devote himself to something quite different—in this case the description of the daily life and pursuits of a thirteenth-century sportsman of easy means. Often the connection with the general story is kept only by the introduction of the most obvious and perfunctory devices—an intrigue with Dame Hersent, a passing trick played on Isengrim, and so forth.

Nevertheless the whole is knit together, to a degree altogether unusual in a work of such magnitude, due to many different hands, by an extraordinary unity of tone and temper. This tone and this temper are to some extent conditioned by the Rise of Allegory, the great feature, in succession to the outburst of Romance, of our present period. The Rise of
Allegory. We do not find in the original Renart branches the abstracting of qualities and the personification of abstractions which appear in later developments, and which are due to the popularity of the Romance of the Rose, if it be not more strictly correct to say that the popularity of the Romance of the Rose was due to the taste for allegory. Jacquemart Giélée, the author of Renart le Nouvel, might personify Renardie and work his beast-personages into knights of[Pg 292] tourney; the clerk of Troyes, who later wrote Renart le Contrefait, might weave a sort of encyclopædia into his piece. But the authors of the "Ancien Renart" knew better. With rare lapses, they exhibit wonderful art in keeping their characters beasts, while assigning to them human arts; or rather, to put the matter with more correctness, they pass over the not strictly beast-like performances of Renart and the others with such entire unconcern, with such a perfect freedom from tedious after-thought of explanation, that no sense of incongruity occurs. The illustrations of Méon's Renart, which show us the fox painfully clasping in his forelegs a stick four times his own length, show the inferiority of the nineteenth century. Renart may beat le vilain (everybody beats the poor vilain) as hard as he likes in the old French text; it comes all naturally. A neat copper-plate engraving, in the best style of sixty or seventy years ago, awakes distrust.

The general fable is so familiar that not much need be said about it. But it is, I think, not unfair to say that the German and Flemish versions, from the latter of which Caxton's and all later English forms seem to be copied, are, if better adjusted to a continuous story, less saturated with the quintessence of satiric criticism of life than the French Renart. The fault of excessive coarseness of thought and expression, which has been commented on in the fabliaux, recurs here to the fullest extent; but it is atoned for and sweetened by an even greater measure of irony. As to the definite purposes of this irony it[Pg 293] would not be well to be too sure. The passage quoted on a former page will show with what completely fearless satire the trouvères treated Church and State, God and Man. It is certain that they had no love of any kind for the clergy, who were not merely their rivals but their enemies; and it is not probable they had much for the knightly order, who were their patrons. But it is never in the very least degree safe to conclude, in a mediæval writer, from that satire of abuses, which is so frequent, to the distinct desire of reform or revolution, which is so rare. The satire of the Renart—and it is all the more delightful—is scarcely in the smallest degree political, is only in an interesting archæological way of the time ecclesiastical or religious; but it is human, perennial, contemptuous of mere time and circumstance, throughout.

It cannot, no doubt, be called kindly satire—French satire very rarely is. Renart, the only hero, though a hero sometimes uncommonly hard bested, is a furred and four-footed Jonathan Wild. He appears to have a creditable paternal affection for Masters Rovel, Percehaie, and the other cubs; and despite his own extreme licence of conjugal conduct, only one or two branches make Dame Hermeline, his wife, either false to him or ill-treated by him. In these respects, as in the other that he is scarcely ever outwitted, he has the advantage of Jonathan. But otherwise I think our great eighteenth-century maufès was a better fellow than Renart, because he was much less purely malignant. I do not think that Jonathan often said his prayers; but he probably never went to[Pg 294] bed, as Reynard did upon the hay-mow, after performing his devotions in a series of elaborate curses upon all his enemies. The fox is so clever that one never dislikes him, and generally admires him; but he is entirely compact of all that is worst, not merely in beast-nature but in humanity. And it is a triumph of the writers that, this being so, we at once can refrain from disliking him, and are not tempted to like him illegitimately.

The trouvères did not trouble themselves to work out any complete character among the many whom they grouped round this great personage; but they left none without touches of vivification and verisimilitude. The female beasts—Dame Fière or Orgueilleuse, the lioness, Hersent, the she-wolf, Hermeline, the vixen, and the rest—are too much tinged with that stock slander of feminine character which was so common in the Middle Ages. And each is rather too much of a type, a fault which may be also found with their lords. Yet all of these—Bruin and Brichemer, Coart and Chanticleer, Tybert and Primaut, Hubert and Roonel—have the liveliest touches, not merely of the coarsely labelling kind, but of the kind that makes a character alive. And, save as concerns the unfortunate capons and gelines whom Renart consumes, so steadily and with such immunity, it cannot be said that their various misfortunes are ever incurred without a valid excuse in poetical justice. Isengrim, the chief of them all, is an especial case in point. Although he is Chief Constable, he is just as much of a rascal and a malefactor[Pg 295] as Renart himself, with the additional crime of stupidity. One is disposed to believe that, if domiciliary visits were made to their various abodes, Malpertuis would by no means stand alone as a bad example of a baronial abode. Renart is indeed constantly spoken of as Noble's "baron." Yet it would be a great mistake to take this epic, as it has been sometimes taken, for a protest against baronial suppression. A sense of this, no doubt, counts—as do senses of many other oppressions that are done under the sun. But it is the satire on life as a whole that is uppermost; and that is what makes the poem, or collection of poems, so remarkable. It is hard, coarse, prosaic except for the range and power of its fancy, libellous enough on humanity from behind its stalking-brutes. But it is true, if an exaggeration of the truth; and its constant hugging of the facts of life supplies the strangest possible contrast to the graceful but shadowy land of romance which we have left in former chapters. We all know the burial-scene of Launcelot—later, no doubt, in its finest form, but in suggestion and spirit of the time with which we are dealing. Let us now consider briefly the burial-scene of Renart.

When Méon, the excellent first editor of the collection, put, as was reason, the branch entitled "La Mort Renart" last, he was a little troubled by the consideration that several of the beasts whom in former branches Renart himself has brought to evil ends reappear and take part in his funeral. But this scarcely argued a sufficient appreciation of the true spirit of the cycle. The beasts, though per[Pg 296]fectly lively abstractions, are, after all, abstractions in a way, and you cannot kill an abstraction. Nay, the author, with a really grand final touch of the pervading satire which is the key of the whole, gives us to understand at the last that Renart (though he has died not once, but twice, in the course of the fytte) is not really dead at all, and that when Dame Hermeline persuades the complaisant ambassadors to report to the Lion-King that they have seen the tomb with Renart inscribed upon it, the fact was indeed true but the meaning false, inasmuch as it was another Renart altogether. Indeed the true Renart is clearly immortal.

Nevertheless, as it is his mission, and that of his poets, to satirise all the things of Life, so must Death also be satirised in his person and with his aid. The branch, though it is probably not a very early one, is of an admirable humour, and an uncompromising truth after a fashion, which makes the elaborate realism and pessimism of some other periods look singularly poor, thin, and conventional. The author, for the keeping of his story, begins by showing the doomed fox more than a little "failed"—the shadow of fate dwelling coldly beforehand on him. He is badly mauled at the opening (though, it is true, he takes vengeance for it) by monks whose hen-roost he is robbing, and when he meets Coart the hare, sur son destrier, with a vilain whom he has captured (this is a mark of lateness, some of the verisimilitude of the early time having been dropped), he plays him no tricks. Nay, when Isengrim and he begin to play chess[Pg 297] he is completely worsted by his ancient butt, who at last takes, in consequence of an imprudent stake of the penniless Fox, a cruel but appropriate vengeance for his former wrongs. Renart is comforted to some extent by his old love, Queen Fière the lioness; but pain, and wounds, and defeat have brought him near death, and he craves a priest. Bernard the Ass, Court-Archpriest, is ready, and admonishes the penitent with the most becoming gravity and unction. The confession, as might be expected, is something impudent; and the penitent very frankly stipulates that if he gets well his oath of repentance is not to stand good. But it looks as if he were to be taken at the worse side of his word, and he falls into a swoon which is mistaken for death. The Queen laments him with perfect openness; but the excellent Noble is a philosophic husband as well as a good king, and sets about the funeral of Renart

says he) with great earnestness. Hermeline and her orphans are fetched from Malpertuis, and the widow makes heartrending moan, as does Cousin Grimbart when the news is brought to him. The vigils of the dead are sung, and all the beasts who have hated Renart, and whom he has affronted in his lifetime, assemble in decent mourning and perform the service, with the ceremony of the most well-trained choir. Afterwards they "wake" the corpse through the night a little noisily; but on the morrow the obsequies are resumed "in the best and most orgilous manner," with a series of grave-side speeches which read like a de[Pg 298]signed satire on those common in France at the present day. A considerable part of the good Archpriest's own sermon is unfortunately not reproducible in sophisticated times; but every one can appreciate his tender reference to the deceased's prowess in daring all dangers—

for, as he observes in a sorrowful parenthesis, "anything was in season if you could only get hold of it." Brichemer the Stag notes how Reynard had induced the monks to observe their vows by making them go to bed late and get up early to watch their fowls. But when Bruin the Bear has dug his grave, and holy water has been thrown on him, and Bruin is just going to shovel the earth—behold! Reynard wakes up, catches Chanticleer (who is holding the censer) by the neck, and bolts into a thick pleached plantation. Still, despite this resurrection, his good day is over, and a levée en masse of the Lion's people soon surrounds him, catches him up, and forces him to release Chanticleer, who, nothing afraid, challenges him to mortal combat on fair terms, beats him, and leaves him for dead in the lists. And though he manages to pay Rohart the Raven and his wife (who think to strip his body) in kind, he reaches Malpertuis dead-beat; and we feel that even his last shift and the faithful complaisance of Grimbart will never leave him quite the same Fox again.[Pg 299]

The defects which distinguish almost all mediæval poetry are no doubt discoverable here. There is some sophistication of the keeping in the episodes of Coart and Chanticleer, and the termination is almost too audacious in the sort of choice of happy or unhappy ending, triumph or defeat for the hero, which it leaves us. Yet this very audacity suits the whole scheme; and the part dealing with the death (or swoon) and burial is assuredly one of the best things of its kind in French, almost one of the best things in or out of it. The contrast between the evident delight of the beasts at getting rid of Renart and their punctilious discharge of ceremonial duties, the grave parody of rites and conventions, remind us more of Swift or Lucian than of any French writer, even Rabelais or Voltaire. It happened that some ten or twelve years had passed between the time when the present writer had last opened Renart (except for mere reference now and then) and the time when he refreshed his memory of it for the purposes of the present volume. It is not always in such cases that the second judgment exactly confirms the first; but here, not merely in the instance of this particular branch but almost throughout, I can honestly say that I put down the Roman de Renart with even a higher idea of its literary merit than that with which I had taken it up.

The second great romance which distinguishes the thirteenth century in France stands, as we may say, to one side of the Roman de Renart as the fabliaux do to the other side. But, though[Pg 300] complex in fewer pieces, the Roman de la Rose[142] is, like the Roman de Renart, a complex, not a single work; and its two component parts are distinguished from one another by a singular change of tone and temper. It is the later and larger part of the Rose which brings it close to Renart: the smaller and earlier is conceived in a spirit entirely different, though not entirely alien, and one which, reinforcing the satiric drift of the fabliaux and Renart itself, influenced almost the entire literary production in belles lettres at least, and sometimes out of them, for more than two centuries throughout Europe.

At no time probably except in the Middle Ages would Jean de Meung, who towards the end of the thirteenth century took up the scheme which William of Lorris had left unfinished forty years earlier, have thought of continuing the older poem instead of beginning a fresh one for himself. And at no other time probably would any one, choosing to make a continuation, have carried it out by putting such entirely different wine into the same bottle. Of William himself little is known, or rather nothing, except that he must have been, as his continuator certainly was, a native of the Loire district; so that the Rose is a product of Central, not, like Renart, of Northern France, and exhibits, especially in the[Pg 301] Lorris portion, an approximation to Provençal spirit and form.

The use of personification and abstraction, especially in relation to love-matters, had not been unknown in the troubadour poetry itself and in the northern verse, lyrical and other, which grew up beside or in succession to it. It rose no doubt partly, if not wholly, from the constant habit in sermons and theological treatises of treating the Seven Deadly Sins and other abstractions as entities. Every devout or undevout frequenter of the Church in those times knew "Accidia"[143] and Avarice, Anger and Pride, as bodily rather than ghostly enemies, furnished with a regular uniform, appearing in recognised circumstances and companies, acting like human beings. And these were by no means the only sacred uses of allegory.

When William of Lorris, probably at some time in the fourth decade of the thirteenth century, set to work to write the Romance of the Rose, he adjusted this allegorical handling to the purposes of love-poetry with an ingenious intricacy never before attained. It has been the fashion almost ever since the famous Romance was rescued from the ignorant and contemptuous oblivion into which it had fallen, to praise Jean de Meung's part at the expense of that due to William of Lorris. But this is hard to justify either on directly æsthetic or on historical principles of criticism. In the first[Pg 302] place, there can be no question that, vitally as he changed the spirit, Jean de Meung was wholly indebted to his predecessor for the form—the form of half-pictorial, half-poetic allegory, which is the great characteristic of the poem, and which gave it the enormous attraction and authority that it so long possessed. In the second place, clever as Jean de Meung is, and more thoroughly in harmony as he may be with the esprit gaulois, his work is on a much lower literary level than that of his predecessor. Jean de Meung in the latter and larger part of the poem simply stuffs into it stock satire on women, stock learning, stock semi-pagan morality. He is, it is true, tolerably actual; he shares with the fabliau-writers and the authors of Renart a firm grasp on the perennial rascalities and meannesses of human nature. The negative commendation that he is "no fool" may be very heartily bestowed upon him. But he is a little commonplace and more than a little prosaic. There is amusement in him, but no charm: and where (that is to say, in large spaces) there is no amusement, there is very little left. Nor, except for the inappropriate exhibition of learning and the strange misuse of poetical (at least of verse) allegory, can he be said to be eminently characteristic of his own time. His very truth to general nature prevents that; while his literary ability, considerable as it is, is hardly sufficient to clothe his universally true reflections in a universally acceptable form.

The first four thousand and odd lines of the Romance, on the other hand—for beyond them it is[Pg 303] known that the work of William of Lorris does not go—contain matter which may seem but little connected with criticism of life, arranged in a form completely out of fashion. But they, beyond all question, contain also the first complete presentation of a scheme, a mode, an atmosphere, which for centuries enchained, because they expressed, the poetical thought of the time, and which, for those who can reach the right point of view, can develop the right organs of appreciation, possess an extraordinary, indeed a unique charm. I should rank this first part of the Roman de la Rose high among the books which if a man does not appreciate he cannot even distantly understand the Middle Ages; indeed there is perhaps no single one which on the serious side contains such a master-key to their inmost recesses.

To comprehend a Gothic cathedral the Rose should be as familiar as the Dies Iræ. For the spirit of it is indeed, though faintly "decadent," even more the mediæval spirit than that of the Arthurian legend, precisely for the reason that it is less universal, less of humanity generally, more of this particular phase of humanity. And as it is opposed to, rather than complementary of, the religious side of the matter in one direction, so it opposes and completes the satirical side, of which we have heard so much in this chapter, and the purely fighting and adventurous part, which we have dealt with in others, not excluding by any means in this half-reflective, half-contrasting office, the philosophical side also. Yet when men pray and fight, when they sneer and speculate, they[Pg 304] are constrained to be very like themselves and each other. They are much freer in their dreams: and the Romance of the Rose, if it has not much else of life, is like it in this way—that it too is a dream.

As such it quite honestly holds itself out. The author lays it down, supporting himself with the opinion of another "qui ot nom macrobes," that dreams are quite serious things. At any rate he will tell a dream of his own, a dream which befell him in his twentieth year, a dream wherein was nothing

And if any one wishes to know how the romance telling this dream shall be called—

The poem itself opens with a description of a dewy morn in May, a description then not so hackneyed as, chiefly from this very instance, it afterwards became, and in itself at once "setting," so to speak, the frame of gracious decorative imagery in which the poet works. He "threaded a silver needle" (an odd but not unusual mediæval pastime was sewing stitches in the sleeve) and strolled, cousant ses manches, towards a river-bank. Then, after bathing his face and seeing the bright gravel flashing through the water, he continued his stroll down-stream, till he saw in front of him a great park (for this translates the mediæval verger much better than "orchard"), on the wall of which were portrayed[Pg 305] certain images[144]—Hatred, Felony, Villainy, Covetousness, Avarice, Envy, Sadness, Old Age, Hypocrisy, and Poverty. These personages, who strike the allegoric and personifying note of the poem, are described at varying length, the last three being perhaps the best. Despite these uninviting figures, the Lover (as he is soon called) desires violently to enter the park; but for a long time he can find no way in, till at length Dame Oyseuse (Idleness) admits him at a postern. She is a very attractive damsel herself; and she tells the Lover that Delight and all his Court haunt the park, and that he has had the ugly images made, apparently as skeletons at the feast, to heighten, not to dash, enjoyment. Entering, the Lover thinks he is in the Earthly Paradise, and after a time he finds the fair company listening to the singing of Dame Lyesse (Pleasure), with much dancing, music, and entertainment of jongleurs and jongleresses to help pass the time.

Courtesy asks him to join in the karole (dance), and he does so, giving full description of her, of Lyesse, of Delight, and of the God of Love himself, with his bow-bearer Sweet-Glances, who carries in each hand five arrows—in the right Beauty, Simpleness, Frankness, Companionship, Fair-Seeming; in the left Pride, Villainy,[145] Shame, Despair, and "New-Thought"[Pg 306]—i.e., Fickleness. Other personages—sometimes with the same names, sometimes with different—follow in the train; Cupid watches the Lover that he may take shot at him, and the tale is interrupted by an episode giving the story of Narcissus. Meanwhile the Lover has seen among the flowers of the garden one rose-bud on which he fixes special desires. The thorns keep him off; and Love, having him at vantage, empties the right-hand quiver on him. He yields himself prisoner, and a dialogue between captive and captor follows. Love locks his heart with a gold key; and after giving him a long sermon on his duties, illustrated from the Round Table romances and elsewhere, vanishes, leaving him in no little pain, and still unable to get at the Rose. Suddenly in his distress there appears to him

and it seems that he was the son of Courtesy.

Bialacoil (to give him his Chaucerian[146] Englishing) is most obliging, and through his help the Lover has nearly reached the Rose, when an ugly personage named Danger in turn makes his appearance. Up to this time there is no very important difficulty in the interpretation of the allegory; but the learned are not at one as to what "Danger" means.[Pg 307] The older explanation, and the one to which I myself still incline as most natural and best suiting what follows, is that Danger is the representative of the beloved one's masculine and other guardians—her husband, father, brother, mother, and so forth. Others, however, see in him only subjective obstacles—the coyness, or caprice, or coquettishness of the Beloved herself. But these never troubled a true lover to any great extent; and besides they seem to have been provided for by the arrows in the left hand of Love's bow-bearer, and by Shame (v. infra). At any rate Danger's proceedings are of a most kill-joy nature. He starts from his hiding-place—

He abuses Bialacoil for bringing the Lover to the Rose, and turns the Lover out of the park, while Bialacoil flies.

To the disconsolate suitor appears Reason, and does not speak comfortable words. She is described as a middle-aged lady of a comely and dignified appearance, crowned, and made specially in God's image and likeness. She tells him that if he had not put himself under the guidance of Idleness, Love would not have wounded him; that besides Danger, he has made her own daughter Shame his foe, and also Male-Bouche (Scandal, Gossip, Evil-Speaking), the third and most formidable guardian of the Rose.[Pg 308] He ought never to have surrendered to Love. In the service of that power

The Lover does not take this sermon well. He is Love's: she may go about her business, which she does. He bethinks him that he has a companion, Amis (the Friend), who has always been faithful; and he will go to him in his trouble. Indeed Love had bidden him do so. The Friend is obliging and consoling, and says that he knows Danger. His bark is worse than his bite, and if he is spoken softly to he will relent. The Lover takes the advice with only partial success. Danger, at first robustious, softens so far as to say that he has no objection to the Lover loving, only he had better keep clear of his roses. The Friend represents this as an important point gained; and as the next step Pity and Frankness go as his ambassadresses to Danger, who allows Bialacoil to return to him and take him once more to see the Rose, more beautiful than ever. He even, assisted by Venus, is allowed to kiss his love.

This is very agreeable: but it arouses the two other guardians of whom Reason has vainly warned him, Shame and Evil-Speaking, or Scandal. The latter wakes Jealousy, Fear follows, and Fear and Shame stir up Danger. He keeps closer watch, Jealousy digs a trench round the rose-bush and builds a tower where Bialacoil is immured: and[Pg 309] the Lover, his case only made worse by the remembered savour of the Rose on his lips,[147] is left helpless outside. But as the rubric of the poem has it—

The work which forty years later Jean de Meung (some say at royal suggestion) added to the piece, so as to make it five times its former length, has been spoken of generally already, and needs less notice in detail. Jean de Meung takes up the theme by once more introducing Reason, whose remonstrances, with the Lover's answers, take nearly half as much room as the whole story hitherto. Then reappears the Friend, who is twice as long-winded as Reason, and brings the tale up to more than ten thousand lines already. At last Love himself takes some pity of his despairing vassal, and besieges the tower where Bialacoil is confined. "False-Seeming." This leads to the introduction of the most striking and characteristic figure of the second part, Faux-Semblant, a variety of Reynard. Bialacoil is freed: but Danger still guards the Rose. Love, beaten, invokes the help of his mother, who sends Nature and Genius to his aid. They talk more than anybody else. But Venus has to come herself before Danger is vanquished and the Lover plucks the Rose.[Pg 310]

The appeal of this famous poem is thus twofold, though the allegorical form in which the appeal is conveyed is the same. In the first part all the love-poetry of troubadour and trouvère is gathered up and presented under the guise of a graceful dreamy symbolism, a little though not much sicklied o'er with learning. In the second the satiric tendency of the Fabliaux and Renart is carried still further, with an admixture of not often apposite learning to a much greater extent. Narcissus was superfluous where William of Lorris introduced him, but Pygmalion and his image, inserted at great length by Jean de Meung, when after twenty thousand lines the catastrophe is at length approaching, are felt to be far greater intruders.

The completeness of the representation of the time given by the poem is of course enormously increased by this second part, and the individual touches, though rather lost in the wilderness of "skipping octosyllables," are wonderfully sharp and true at times. Yet to some judgments at any rate the charm of the piece will seem mostly to have vanished when Bialacoil is once shut up in his tower. In mere poetry Jean de Meung is almost infinitely the inferior of William of Lorris: and though the latter may receive but contemptuous treatment from persons who demand "messages," "meanings," and so forth, others will find message and meaning enough in his allegorical presentation of the perennial quest, of "the way of a man with a maid," and more than enough beauty in the pictures[Pg 311] with which he has adorned it. He is indeed the first great word-painter of the Middle Ages, and for long—almost to the close of them—most poets simply copied him, while even the greatest used him as a starting-point and source of hints.[148] Also besides pictures he has music—music not very brilliant or varied, but admirably matching his painting, soft, dreamy, not so much monotonous as uniform with a soothing uniformity. Few poets deserve better than William of Lorris the famous hyperbole which Greek furnished in turn to Latin and to English. He is indeed "softer than sleep," and, as soft sleep is, laden with gracious and various visions.

The great riches of French literature at this time, and the necessity of arranging this history rather with a view to "epoch-making" kinds and books than to interesting individual authors, make attention to many of these latter impossible here. Thus Marie de France[149] yields to few authors of our two centuries in charm and interest for the reader; yet for us she must be regarded chiefly as one of the practitioners of the fable, and as the chief practitioner of the Lai, which in her hands is merely a subdivision of the general romance on a smaller scale. So, again, the trouvère Rutebœuf, who has been the subject of critical attention, a little disproportionate perhaps,[Pg 312] considering the vast amount of work as good as his which has hardly any critical notice, but still not undeserved, must serve us rather as an introducer of the subject of dramatic poetry than as an individual, though his work is in the bulk of it non-dramatic, and though almost all of it is full of interest in itself.

Rutebœuf[150] (a name which seems to be a professional nom de guerre rather than a patronymic) was married in 1260, and has devoted one of his characteristic poems, half "complaints," half satires, to this not very auspicious event. For the rest, it is rather conjectured than known that his life must have filled the greater part, if not the whole, of the last two-thirds of the thirteenth century, thus including the dates of both parts of the Rose within it. The tendencies of the second part of the great poem appear in Rutebœuf more distinctly than those of the earlier, though, like both, his work shows the firm grip which allegory was exercising on all poetry, and indeed on all literature. He has been already referred to as having written an outlying "branch" of Renart; and not a few of his other poems—Le Dit des Cordeliers, Frère Denise, and others—are of the class of the Fabliaux: indeed Rutebœuf may be taken as the type and chief figure to us of the whole body of fabliau-writing trouvères. Besides the marriage poem, we have others on his personal affairs, the chief of which is speakingly entitled "La Pauvreté Rutebœuf." But he has been even more, and even more justly, prized as having left[Pg 313] us no small number of historical or political poems, not a few of which are occupied with the decay of the crusading spirit. The "Complainte d'Outremer," the "Complainte de Constantinoble," the "Débat du Croisé et du Décroisé" tell their own tale, and contain generous, if perhaps not very long-sighted or practical, laments and indignation over the decadence of adventurous piety. Others are less religious; but, on the whole, Rutebœuf, even in his wilder days, seems to have been (except for that dislike of the friars, in which he was not alone) a religiously minded person, and we have a large body of poems, assigned to his later years, which are distinctly devotional. These deal with his repentance, with his approaching death, with divers Lives of Saints, &c. But the most noteworthy of them, as a fresh strand in the rope we are here weaving, is the Miracle-play of Théophile. It will serve as a text or starting-point on which to take up the subject of the drama itself, with no more about Rutebœuf except the observation that the varied character of his work is no doubt typical of that of at least the later trouvères generally. They were practically men of letters, not to say journalists, of all work that was likely to pay; and must have shifted from romance to drama, from satire to lyric, just as their audience or their patrons might happen to demand, as their circumstances or their needs might happen to dictate.

The obscure but not uninteresting subject of the links between the latest stages of classical drama and the earliest stages of mediæval belong to the first volume of this series; indeed by[Pg 314] the eleventh century (or before the period, properly speaking, of this book opens) the vernacular drama, as far as the sacred side of it is concerned, was certainly established in France, although not in any other country. But it is not quite certain whether we actually possess anything earlier than the twelfth century, even in French, and it is exceedingly doubtful whether what we have in any other vernacular is older than the fourteenth. The three oldest mystery plays wherein any modern language makes its appearance are those of The Ten Virgins,[151] mainly in Latin, but partly in a dialect which is neither quite French nor quite Provençal; the Mystery of Daniel, partly Latin and partly French; and the Mystery of Adam,[152] which is all French. The two latter, when first discovered, were as usual put too early by their discoverers; but it is certain that they are not younger than the twelfth century, while it is all but certain that the Ten Virgins dates from the eleventh, if not even the tenth. In the thirteenth we find, besides Rutebœuf's Théophile, a Saint Nicolas by another very well-known trouvère, Jean Bodel of Arras, author of many late and probably rehandled chansons, and of the famous classification of romance which has been adopted above.

It was probably on the well-known principle of "not letting the devil have all the best tunes" that the Church, which had in the patristic ages so vio[Pg 315]lently denounced the stage, and which has never wholly relaxed her condemnation of its secular use, attempted at once to gratify and sanctify the taste for dramatic performances by adopting the form, and if possible confining it to pious uses. But there is a school of literary historians who hold that there was no direct adoption of a form intentionally dramatic, and that the modern sacred drama—the only drama for centuries—was simply an expansion of or excrescence from the services of the Church herself, which in their antiphonal character, and in the alternation of monologue and chorus, were distinctly dramatic in form. This, however, is one of those numerous questions which are only good to be argued, and can never reach a conclusion; nor need it greatly trouble those who believe that all literary forms are more or less natural to man, and that man's nature will therefore, example or no example, find them out and practise them, in measure and degree according to circumstances, sooner or later.

At any rate, if there was any hope in the mind of any ecclesiastical person at any time of confining dramatic performances to sacred subjects, that hope was doomed to disappointment, and in France at least to very speedy disappointment. The examples of Mystery or Miracle plays which we have of a date older than the beginning of the fourteenth century are not numerous, but it is quite clear that at an early time the necessity for interspersing comic interludes was recognised; and it is needless to say to any one who has ever looked even slightly at the subject that these interludes soon[Pg 316] became a regular part of the performance, and exhibited what to modern ideas seems a very indecorous disregard of the respect due to the company in which they found themselves. The great Bible mysteries, no less and no more than the miracle plays of the Virgin[153] and the Saints, show this characteristic throughout, and the Fool's remark which pleased Lamb, "Hazy weather, Master Noah!" was a strictly legitimate and very much softened descendant of the kind of pleasantries which diversify the sacred drama of the Middle Ages in all but its very earliest examples.

It was certain, at any rate in France, that from comic interludes in sacred plays to sheer profane comedy in ordinary life the step would not be far nor the interval of time long. The fabliaux more particularly were farces already in the state of scenario, and some of them actually contained dialogue. To break them up and shape them into actual plays required much less than the innate love for drama which characterises the French people, and the keen literary sense and craft which characterised the French trouvères of the thirteenth century.

The honour of producing the first examples known to us is assigned to Adam de la Halle, a trouvère of Arras, who must have been a pretty exact contemporary of Rutebœuf, and who be[Pg 317]sides some lyrical work has left us two plays, Li Jus de la Feuillie and Robin et Marion.[154] The latter, as its title almost sufficiently indicates, is a dramatised pastourelle; the former is less easy to classify, but it stands in something like the same relation to the personal poems, of which, as has just been mentioned in the case of Rutebœuf himself, the trouvères were so fond. For it introduces himself, his wife (at least she is referred to), his father, and divers of his Arras friends. And though rough in construction, it is by no means a very far-off ancestor of the comedy of manners in its most developed form.

It may be more interesting to give some account here of these two productions, the parents of so numerous and famous a family, than to dwell on the early miracle plays, which reached their fullest development in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and then for the most part died away. The play (Jeu is the general term, and the exact, though now in French obsolete, equivalent of the English word) of Robin et Marion combines the general theme of the earlier lyric pastourelle, as explained above, with the more general pastoral theme of the love of shepherd and shepherdess. The scene opens on Marion singing to the burden "Robins m'a demandée, si m'ara." To her the Knight, who inquires the meaning of her song, whereupon she avows her love for Robin. Nevertheless he woos her, in a fashion rather clumsy than cavalier, but receives[Pg 318] no encouragement. Robin comes up after the Knight's departure. He is, to use Steerforth's words in David Copperfield, "rather a chuckle-headed fellow for the girl," but is apparently welcome. They eat rustic fare together and then dance; but more company is desired, and Robin goes to fetch it. He tells the friends he asks that some one has been courting Marion, and they prudently resolve to bring, one his great pitchfork and another his good blackthorn. Meanwhile the Knight returns, and though Marion replies to his accost—

he renews his suit, but is again rejected. Returning in a bad temper he meets Robin and cuffs him soundly, a correction which Robin does not take in the heroic manner. Marion runs to rescue him, and the Knight threatens to carry her off—which Robin, even though his friends have come up, is too cowardly to prevent. She, however, is constant and escapes; the piece finishing by a long and rather tedious festival of the clowns. Its drawbacks are obvious, and are those natural to an experiment which has no patterns before it; but the figure of Marion is exceedingly graceful and pleasing, and the whole has promise. It is essentially a comic opera; but that a trouvère of the thirteenth century should by himself, so far as we can see, have founded comic opera is not a small thing.

The Jus de la Feuillie ("the booths"), otherwise Li Jus Adam, or Adam's play, is more ambitious and more complicated, but also more chaotic. It is, as has been[Pg 319] said, an early sketch of a comedy of manners; but upon this is grafted in the most curious way a fairy interlude, or rather after-piece. Adam himself opens the piece and informs his friends with much coolness that he has tried married life, but intends to go back to "clergy" and then set out for Paris, leaving his father to take care of his wife. He even replies to the neighbours' remonstrances by enlarging in the most glowing terms on the passion he has felt for his wife and on her beauty, adding, with a crude brutality which has hardly a ghost of atoning fun in it, that this is all over—

His father then appears, and Adam shows himself not more dutiful as a son than he is grateful as a husband. But old Henri de la Halle, an easy-going father, has not much reproach for him. The piece, however, has hardly begun before it goes off into a medley of unconnected scenes, though each has a sort of fabliau interest of its own. A doctor is consulted by his clients; a monk demands alms and offerings in the name of Monseigneur Saint Acaire, promising miracles; a madman succeeds him; and in the midst enters the Mainie Hellequin, "troop of Hellequin" (a sort of Oberon or fairy king), with Morgue la fée among them. The fairies end with a song, and the miscellaneous conversation of the men of Arras resumes and continues for some time, reaching, in fact, no formal termination.

In this odd piece, which, except the description of[Pg 320] Marie the deserted wife, has little poetical merit, we see drama of the particular kind in a much ruder and vaguer condition than in the parallel instance of Robin et Marion. There the very form of the pastourelle was in a manner dramatic—it wanted little adjustment to be quite so; and though the coda of the rustic merry-making is rather artless, it is conceivably admissible. Here we are not far out of Chaos as far as dramatic arrangement goes. Adam's announced desertion of his wife and intended journey to Paris lead to nothing: the episodes or scenes of the doctor and the monk are connected with nothing; the fool or madman and his father are equally independent; and the "meyney of Hellequin" simply play within the play, not without rhyme, but certainly with very little reason. Nevertheless the piece is almost more interesting than the comparatively regular farces (into which rather later the fabliaux necessarily developed themselves) and than the miracle plays (which were in the same way dramatic versions of the Lives of the Saints), precisely because of this irregular and pillar-to-post character. We see that the author is trying a new kind, that he is endeavouring to create for himself. He is not copying anything in form; he is borrowing very little from any one in material. He has endeavoured to represent, and has not entirely failed in representing, the comings and goings, the ways and says, of his townsmen at fair and market. The curiously desultory character of this early drama—the character hit off most happily in modern times by Wallenstein's Lager—naturally appears here in an exaggerated form. But the root[Pg 321] of the matter—the construction of drama, not on the model of Terence or of anybody, but on the model of life—is here.

It will be for my successor to show the wide extension of this dramatic form in the succeeding period. Here it takes rank rather as having the interest of origins, and as helping to fill out the picture of the marvellously various ability of Frenchmen of letters in the thirteenth century, than for the positive bulk or importance of its constituents. And it is important to repeat that it connects itself in the general literary survey both with fabliau and with allegory. The personifying taste, which bred or was bred from allegory, is very close akin to the dramatic taste, and the fabliau, as has been said more than once, is a farce in the making, and sometimes far advanced towards being completely made.

All the matter hitherto discussed in this chapter, as well as all that of previous chapters as far as French is concerned, with the probable if not certain exception of the Arthurian romances, has been in verse. Indeed—still with this exception, and with the further and more certain exceptions of a few laws, a few sermons, &c.—there was no French prose, or none that has come down to us, until the thirteenth century. The Romance tongues, as contradistinguished from Anglo-Saxon and Icelandic, were slow to develop vernacular prose; the reason, perhaps, being that Latin, of one kind or another, was still so familiar to all persons of any education that, for purposes of instruction and use,[Pg 322] vernacular prose was not required, while verse was more agreeable to the vulgar.

Yet it was inevitable that prose should, sooner or later, make its appearance; and it was equally inevitable that spoken prose sermons should be of the utmost antiquity. Indeed such sermons form, by reasonable inference, the subject of the very earliest reference[155] to that practically lost lingua romana rustica which formed the bridge between Latin and the Romance tongues. But they do not seem to have been written down, and were no doubt extempore addresses rather than regular discourses. Law appears to have had the start of divinity in the way of providing formal written prose; and the law-fever of the Northmen, which had already shaped, or was soon to shape, the "Gray-goose" code of their northernmost home in Iceland, expressed itself early in Normandy and England—hardly less early in the famous Lettres du Sépulcre or Assises de Jérusalem, the code of the Crusading kingdom, which was drawn up almost immediately after its establishment, and which exists, though not in the very oldest form. Much uncertainty prevails on the question when the first sermons in French vernacular were formally composed, and by whom. It has been maintained, and denied, that the French sermons of St Bernard which exist are original, in which case the practice must have come in pretty early[Pg 323] in the twelfth century. There is, at any rate, no doubt that Maurice de Sully, who was Archbishop of Paris for more than thirty years, from 1160 onwards, composed sermons in French; or at least that sermons of his, which may have been written in Latin, were translated into French. For this whole point of early prose, especially on theological subjects, is complicated by the uncertainty whether the French forms are original or not. There is no doubt that the feeling expressed by Ascham in England nearly four centuries later, that it would have been for himself much easier and pleasanter to write in Latin, must at the earlier date have prevailed far more extensively.

Still prose made its way: it must have received an immense accession of vogue if the prose Arthurian romances really date from the end of the twelfth century; and by the beginning of the thirteenth it found a fresh channel in which to flow, the channel of historical narrative. The earliest French chronicles of the ordinary compiling kind date from this time; and (which is of infinitely greater importance) it is from this time (cir. 1210) that the first great French prose book, from the literary point, appears—that is to say, the Conquête de Constantinoble,[156] or history of the Fourth Crusade, by Geoffroy de Villehardouin, Marshal of Champagne and Romanie, who was born about 1160 in the first-named province, and died at Messinople in Greece about 1213.

This deservedly famous and thoroughly delightful[Pg 324] book, which has more than one contemporary or slightly younger parallel, though none of these approaches it in literary interest, presents the most striking resemblance to a chanson de geste—in conduct, arrangement (the paragraphs representing laisses), and phraseology. But it is not, as some other early prose is, merely verse without rhyme, and with broken rhythm; and it is impossible to read it without astonished admiration at the excellence of the medium which the writer, apparently by instinct, has attained. The list of the crusaders; their embassy to "li dux de Venise qui ot à nom Henris Dandolo et etait mult sages et mult prouz"; their bargain, in which the business-like Venetian, after stipulating for 85,000 marks of transport-money, agrees to add fifty armed galleys without hire, for the love of God and on the terms of half-conquests; the death of the Count of Champagne (much wept by Geoffroy his marshal); and the substitution after difficulties of Boniface, Marquis of Montserrat;—these things form the prologue. When the army is actually got together the transport-money is unfortunately lacking, and the Venetians, still with the main chance steadily before them, propose that the crusaders shall recover for them, from the King of Hungary, Zara, "Jadres en Esclavonie, qui est une des plus forz citez du monde." Then we are told how Dandolo and his host take the cross; how Alexius Comnenus, the younger son of Isaac, arrives and begs aid; how the fleet set out ("Ha! Dex, tant bon destrier i ot mis!"); how Zara is besieged and[Pg 325] taken; of the pact made with Alexius to divert the host to Constantinople; of the voyage thither after the Pope's absolution for the slightly piratical and not in the least crusading prise de Jadres has been obtained; of the dissensions and desertions at Corfu, and the arrival at the "Bras St Georges," the Sea of Marmora. This is what may be called the second part.

The third part opens with debates at San Stefano as to the conduct of the attack. The emperor sends soft words to "la meillor gens qui soent sanz corone" (this is the description of the chiefs), but they reject them, arrange themselves in seven battles, storm the port, take the castle of Galata, and then assault the city itself. The fighting having gone wholly against him, the emperor retires by the open side of the city, and the Latins triumph. Some show is made of resuming, or rather beginning, a real crusade; but the young Emperor Alexius, to whom his blind father Isaac has handed over the throne, bids them stay, and they do so. Soon dissensions arise, war breaks out, a conspiracy is formed against Isaac and his son by Mourzufle, "et Murchufles chauça les houses vermoilles," quickly putting the former owners of the scarlet boots to death. A second siege and capture of the city follows, and Baldwin of Flanders is crowned emperor, while Boniface marries the widow of Isaac, and receives the kingdom of Salonica.

It has seemed worth while to give this abstract of the book up to a certain point (there is a good deal more of confused fighting in "Romanie" before, at the[Pg 326] death of Boniface, Villehardouin gives up the pen to Henri of Valenciennes), because even such a bare argument may show the masterly fashion in which this first of modern vernacular historians of the great literary line handles his subject. The parts are planned with judgment and adjusted with skill; the length allotted to each incident is just enough; the speeches, though not omitted, are not inserted at the tyrannous length in which later mediæval and even Renaissance historians indulged from corrupt following of the ancients. But no abstract could show—though the few scraps of actual phrase purposely inserted may convey glimpses of it—the vigour and picturesqueness of the recital. That Villehardouin was an eyewitness explains a little, but very little: we have, unfortunately, libraries full of eyewitness-histories which are duller than any ditch-water. Nor, though he is by no means shy of mentioning his own performances, does he communicate to the story that slightly egotistic interest of gossip and personal detail of which his next great successor is perhaps the first example. It is because, while writing a rather rugged but completely genuine and unmetrical though rhythmical prose, Villehardouin has the poet's eye and grasp that he sees, and therefore makes us see, the events that he relates. These events do not form exactly the most creditable chapter of modern history; for they simply come to this, that an army assembling for a crusade against the infidel, allows itself to be bribed or wheedled into two successive attacks on two Christian princes who have given it not the slightest pro[Pg 327]vocation, never attacks the infidel at all, and ends by a filibustering seizure of already Christian territory. Nor does Villehardouin make any elaborate disguise of this; but he tells the tale with such a gust, such a furia, that we are really as much interested in the success of this private piracy as if it had been the true crusade of Godfrey of Bouillon himself.

The earlier and more legitimate crusades did not lack fitting chroniclers in the same style, though none of them had the genius of Villehardouin. The Roman d'Eracles (as the early vernacular version[157] of the Latin chronicle of William of Tyre used to be called, for no better reason than that the first line runs, "Les anciennes histoires dient qu'Eracles [Heraclius] qui fu mout bons crestiens gouverna l'empire de Rome") is a chronicle the earlier part of which is assigned to a certain Bernard, treasurer of the Abbey of Corbie. It is a very extensive relation, carrying the history of Latin Palestine from Peter the Hermit's pilgrimage to about the year 1190, composed probably within ten or fifteen years after this later date, and written, though not with Villehardouin's epic spirit, in a very agreeable and readable fashion. Not much later, vernacular chronicles of profane history in France became common, and the celebrated Grandes Chroniques of St Denis began to be composed in French. Joinville.But the only production of this thirteenth century which has taken rank in general literary knowledge with the work of[Pg 328] the Marshal of Champagne is that[158] of Jean de Joinville, also a Champenois and Seneschal of the province, who was born about ten years after Villehardouin's death, and who died, after a life prolonged to not many short of a hundred years, in 1319. Joinville's historical work seems to have been the occupation of his old age; but its subject, the Life and Crusading misfortunes of Saint Louis, belongs to the experiences of his youth and early middle life. Besides the Histoire de Saint Louis, we have from him a long Credo or profession of religious faith.

There is no reason at all to question the sincerity of this faith. But Joinville was a shrewd and practical man, and when the kings of France and Navarre pressed him to take the cross a second time, he answered that their majesties' servants had during his first absence done him and his people so much harm that he thought he had better not go away again. Indeed it would be displeasing to God, "qui mit son corps pour son peuple sauver," if he, Joinville, abandoned his people. And he reports only in the briefest abstract the luckless "voie de Tunes," or expedition to Tunis. But of the earlier and not much less unlucky Damietta crusade, in which he took part, as well as of his hero's life till all but the last, he has written very fully, and in a fashion which is very interesting, though unluckily we have no manuscript representing the original text, or even near to it in point of time. The book, which has been thought to have been written in pieces at long intervals, has[Pg 329] nothing of the antique vigour of Villehardouin. Joinville is something of a gossip, and though he evidently writes with a definite literary purpose, is not master of very great argumentative powers. But for this same reason he abounds in anecdote, and in the personal detail which, though it may easily be overdone, is undoubtedly now and then precious for the purpose of enabling us to conjure up the things and men of old time more fully and correctly. And there is a Pepysian garrulity as well as a Pepysian shrewdness about Joinville; so that, on the whole, he fills the position of ancestor in the second group of historians, the group of lively raconteurs, as well as Villehardouin leads that of inspired describers. For an instance of the third kind, the philosophical historian, France, if not Europe, had to wait two centuries, when such a one came in Comines.

It is almost unnecessary to say that when the secret of producing prose and its advantages over verse for certain purposes had been discovered, it was freely employed for all such purposes, scientific as science was understood, devotional, instructive, business (the Livre des Mestiers, or book of the guilds of Paris, is of the thirteenth century), and miscellaneous. But few of these things concern literature proper. It is otherwise with the application of prose to fiction.

This, as we have seen, had probably taken place in the case of the Arthurian romances as early as the middle of our period, and throughout the thirteenth century prose romances of length were not unknown, though it was later that all the[Pg 330] three classes—Carlovingian, Arthurian, and Antique—were thrown indiscriminately into prose, and lengthened even beyond the huge length of their later representatives in verse. But for this reason or that, romance in prose was with rare exceptions unfavourable to the production of the best literature. It encouraged the prolixity which was the great curse of the Middle Ages, and the deficient sense of form and scanty presence of models prevented the observance of anything like a proper scheme.

But among the numerous origins of this wonderful time the origin of the short prose tale, in which France was to hold almost if not quite the highest rank among European countries, was also included. It would not seem that the kind was as yet very frequently attempted—the fact that the verse fabliau was still in the very height of its flourishing-time, made this unlikely; nor was it till that flourishing-time was over that farces on the one hand, and prose tales on the other, succeeded as fruit the fabliau-flower. But it is from the thirteenth century that (with some others) we have Aucassin et Nicolette.[159] If it was for a short time rather too much of a fashion to praise (it cannot be over-praised) this exquisite story, no wise man will allow himself to be disgusted any more than he will allow himself to be[Pg 331] attracted by fashion. This work of "the old caitiff," as the author calls himself with a rather Hibernian coaxingness, is what has been called a cantefable—that is to say, it is not only obviously written, like verse romances and fabliaux, for recitation, but it consists partly of prose, partly of verse, the music for the latter being also given. Mr Swinburne, Mr Pater, and, most of all, Mr Lang, have made it unnecessary to tell in any detailed form the story how Aucassin, the son of Count Garin of Beaucaire, fell in love with Nicolette, a Saracen captive, who has been bought by the Viscount of the place and brought up as his daughter; how Nicolette was shut up in a tower to keep her from Aucassin; how Count Bongars of Valence assailed Beaucaire and was captured by Aucassin on the faith of a promise from his father that Nicolette shall be restored to him; how the Count broke his word, and Aucassin, setting his prisoner free, was put in prison himself; how Nicolette escaped, and by her device Aucassin also; how the lovers were united; and how, after a comic interlude in the country of "Torelore," which could be spared by all but folk-lorists, the damsel is discovered to be daughter of the King of Carthage, and all ends in bowers of bliss.

But even the enthusiasm and the art of three of the best writers of English and lovers of literature in this half-century have not exhausted the wonderful charm of this little piece. The famous description of Nicolette, as she escapes from her prison and walks through the daisies that look black against her white feet, is certainly the most beautiful thing of the kind in mediæval[Pg 332] prose-work, and the equal of anything of the kind anywhere. And for original audacity few things surpass Aucassin's equally famous inquiry, "En Paradis qu'ai-je à faire?" with the words with which he follows it up to the Viscount. But these show passages only concentrate the charm which is spread all over the novelette, at least until its real conclusion, the union and escape of the lovers. Here, as in the earlier part of the Rose—to which it is closely akin—is the full dreamy beauty, a little faint, a little shadowy, but all the more attractive, of mediæval art; and here it has managed to convey itself in prose no less happily and with more concentrated happiness than there in verse.

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