tury, mainly by Chrestien de Troyes, to whom, in turn, England owes the "Morte d'Arthur," and Germany the epics of Hartmann, Wolfram, and Gottfried.

These romances, when contrasted with the Chansons," show a growing culture and refinement, a more developed courtesy, and so a more prominent position for women, who seem already hedged with some chivalrous divinity. Idealization shows itself also in the religious background, which in the grail saga becomes very prominent and mystical. Then, too, the form shows more refinement. Assonance is succeeded by true rhyme. But what is most significant is the appeal to a wider public. Tradespeople and bourgeois begin to find a place in the stories, characters that would have had no interest for the public of the "Chansons," to whom no minstrel would have ventured to introduce them.

The "Chansons de geste " had been national, if not local, in tone, and the romances were essentially in accord with the medieval spirit; the next stage of development, however, was more purely artificial. Thirst for novelty, aided by the demands of the monastic schools, led to translations and adaptations of classical subjects, especially the legends of Alexander, to one of which in twelve-syllable lines we owe the alexandrine verse that was destined to play a great part in the French prosody of many following centuries. Nature, too, begins to interest; and " Bestiaries," true" fairy tales of science," such as that age knew, tell of the strange virtues and habits of animals, while other didactic poems recount similar traits of plants and stones. Lyric poetry now begins to be cultivated by the aristocracy. Troubadours in the south and Trouvères in the north write "Romances " and " Pastou

relles," dealing always with ladies and shepherdesses, nearly always with love, usually of a rather facile. character. Meanwhile the true, unsanctified esprit gaulois was revealing itself in "Fabliaux,"short stories in verse, frankly coarse, and often brutal, usually comic and satirical, often cynically skeptical of virtue and with touches of what modern Frenchmen call blague. These tales were written by men, and they are not tender to feminine foibles. No doubt they give too dark a picture of the national morals; but they are essentially realistic stories of every-day life, in strong contrast with the artificial "Pastourelles.' They were to the middle and lower classes as natural as the " Chansons de geste " to the knights. Hence they had in them fruitful seeds of life, and exercised a great and lasting influence. They were so true to unspiritualized human nature that they needed little to adapt them to any age or environment. So the "Fabliaux" have been a storehouse whence the novelists and dramatists of later times have drawn some of their best material. The debt of Boccaccio, of De la Salle, of Chaucer, Shakspere, and Molière to the old French Fabliaux is a striking witness to the truth which all literary history teaches, that "one touch of nature makes the whole world kin."

From the Fabliaux to the drama might seem a natural transition, for many of them were in dialogue. But here the initiative came from the effort of the clergy to make the Scripture story more real to the unlettered multitude than painting or sculpture could have done. "Miracle Plays" were already acted in French before the close of the twelfth century; but they have hardly a trace of literary merit, such as would entitle them to rank with the epics and lyrics

of the time. The thirteenth century, however, was to produce in all these fields the best that mediæval literature has to offer, here as in Germany; and it is interesting to note that in both countries this remarkable age was followed by a stationary if not retrogressive one.

Narrative verse in the thirteenth century, though abundant, shows little invention of new subjects. The tales of chivalrous adventure develop the old themes, with classical reminiscences in the spirit of free fancy and romantic fiction, with less energy but more grace and beauty. And beside this survival there rises the prose tale, drawing its inspiration through Greece by the attrition of the Crusades, as well as from the Latin and the older French epics, which it first equals and then surpasses both in bulk and interest. This indi

cates that while there was still an audience for the minstrel, a reading public was growing that would presently make him superfluous as a narrator and change him to a singer of songs.

There is a pretence of didactic purpose in most of the translated tales of the Gesta Romanorum" and in the oriental "Seven Wise Masters; but original didactic writing is usually in versified fables, in Aesop's manner; and in the hands of Marie de France these attain at the outset a remarkable grace and pathos, though the best work of this genial lady is in the lais, short narrative lyrics, perhaps the most original poems of the century. The songs of Thibaut of Champagne are also very delicate and beautiful. Both poets belong to the high aristocracy and to the earlier half of the century, and their numerous imitators were thoroughly aristocratic both in their lives. and work. The close of the century shows, however,

a marked shifting of the centre of production. Its chief authors, Ruteboeuf and Adam de la Halle, belong, by birth and instinct, to the people, and give a distinctly democratic tone to the drama and to social and political satire.

The former is a typical Parisian bourgeois of the period, whom poverty compelled to turn his hand to hack-work of almost every kind, — panegyrics, lives of saints and miracle plays, fabliaux, and crusading songs, but who avenged himself in days of comparative ease by satirical attacks on his taskmasters, chiefly the clergy and the monks. Some of these, especially the autobiographical "Marriage" and "Complaint, ' have still pungency enough to insure their life. But while Rutebœuf was advancing literature on various lines, his contemporary, Adam de la Halle, was so broadening the French drama that he almost seems its creator. He carried it beyond the religious sphere. He took both his scenes and his characters from the life of his own day and of his native Arras, and so "Le Jeu de la feuillée" (c. 1262) is the first French comedy of manners. Nor was this his only happy hit. In "Robin and Marion" he was first to turn the " Pastourelle" into light opera. The invention of these two genres make the century memorable in French dramatic history, though the plays themselves may seem jejune enough to a modern reader.

Meantime the fable, under the same democratic impulse, had developed from the apologue to the épopée in " Renard the Fox," whose protean forms attest its popularity throughout the Middle Ages. Here are told, with obvious sympathy, the tricks by which

1 The original source seems to have been Flanders. See Lanson, p. 89.

the Fox outwits the authority of the Lion, the strength of the Bear, and the envy of lesser enemies. It thus lends itself easily to the freest social and political satire, of which the moral basis, like that of the "Fabliaux," is cynical skepticism that mocks honor, duty, loyalty, and has unqualified admiration for worldly shrewdness. The scheme admitted an indefinite addition of new episodes, until at last this product of many authors and several generations reached the huge bulk of thirty thousand lines, and seemed likely to die of its own hypertrophy, even while eager imitators were composing new poems on its model.

The obvious danger of satirical allegory is artificial elaboration that makes it both unintelligible and wearisome. This is the fault of "Renard," and in a still greater degree of the " Romance of the Rose," - a more brilliant poem of nearly equal length, in which the Middle Ages found an exhaustless mine of misogynist irony. The wit is of the keenest, but the allegory is too fine spun; and delightful as the poem is in parts, few will have the patience to unravel its tangled plot, in this age that cannot digest the " Faerie Queene." But in its day its fame was very great; it claimed a translation from Chaucer, and some knowledge of its character belongs even to general literary culture.

"The Romance of the Rose" is not a homogeneous work. Guillaume de Loris began it in the aristocratic part of the century; Jean de Meung finished it in the wholly different democratic spirit that marked Adam and Rutebœuf. The former planned a scholarly allegory of the Rose of beauty guarded by the virtues from the vices and from the Lover, whom some assist and others hinder in his effort to pluck and bear her from