the well-defended garden. Guillaume is often truly poetic and occasionally realistic, yet there is small trace in these pretty conceits of anything but serious moralizing. But when Jean took up the parable, in a continuation some four times the length of the original, he maintained, indeed, the essential thread of the allegory, but allowed himself the freest scope for the display of a varied reading and wide learning, and for satirical digressions that enter nearly every field of what was then current in science and speculation, in philosophy, physics, and theology. These give the poem its chief interest to-day, though to the student of mediæval manners it offers pictures that would be sought in vain elsewhere, and in its peculiar vein it has probably never been equalled. Jean de Meung was the first popularizer of rationalism, of Nature as the guide of life. He is the true predecessor of Rabelais, of Montaigne, and of Voltaire; and though he never ceased to imagine himself a devout Catholic, he is essentially Protestant at heart. Nature, to him, is the source of beauty; to live according to Nature is true morality. If he appears sometimes crude and even cynical in his judgments of those who seem most to contradict Nature, the monks and women, he is in the main a severe moralist; and though his work is a strange and ill-ordered medley, he is surely the most original thinker who wrote in French before the Renaissance. The historical prose of the thirteenth century is probably more read than any of its purely literary productions, perhaps because both Villehardouin at the beginning and Joinville at the close of this period were closer students of real life than the poets. Villehardouin writes what might pass for a prose chanson de - for geste if it were not known to be the account of a sober eyewitness of the Fourth Crusade, or, as he more justly calls it, of the Conquest of Constantinople, Christians, not Saracens, were its victims. No account of this mad adventure could lack a spice of romance; but Villehardouin put into it all the childlike naïveté of his time, all the energy of a man of action, all the piety of the ages of faith, all the enthusiasm that participation in a great task could inspire in a generous soul. Thus his Chronicle, as Saintsbury has said, gives a better idea of chivalry and feudalism at their best, than any other single work. It mirrors the life of the Middle Ages, as the " Romance of the Rose" does its thought. It has much of the charm of Froissart, and will never seem old so long as hearts are young. During the century others continued the tradition, though they did not attain the excellence of the Crusader, and toward its close the monks of St. Denis began to compile their official history in French; but that was not literature. On the other hand, Joinville's biography of his friend and master, Louis IX. the Saint, has a peculiar grace and charm that six centuries have not made to fade. Louis died in 1270, but Joinville wrote a generation later in advanced old age. The century that separates him from Villehardouin was, as `we have seen, one of disillusionment; sentiment was yielding to satire, and this was reflected in history as it had been in the epic and lyric poetry. Joinville is more reflective, more inquisitive too. He is a little skeptical about the merit of fighting for fighting's sake, and has his doubts about the value of knight-errantry. There is a great deal of keen though playful satire in the anecdotes that he recalls of the good king. It seems as though the same moral lassitude which in Germany had followed the collapse of Frederic II.'s efforts for the emancipation of the human mind, the discouraged consciousness of the failure of the Crusades, and the growing weight of the ecclesiastical yoke, had here the same effect that it was having in the Empire, driving men to a critical, questioning spirit, to thoughts they were fain to veil in allegory and satire. And Joinville's work is interesting also from a rhetorical side. In him French prose proved its fitness for literary use. It was no longer an experiment, and it is essentially on the lines of his style that it grew and perfected itself. Indeed, so long as the medieval spirit continued, so long as education and especially classical culture was confined to the few, till the minds of men were enlarged and their horizons broadened, no radical change could be expected in literature. The French had already expressed their tender feelings in lyrics, their heroic aspirations in chansons, their life in the chronicles, their social views in satires. They were restless, questioning, expectant. Under these conditions an arrested literary development is almost inevitable. There might be no decline. continue to be done on the old lines; disillusionment spread and deepened. old social system was cracking. see that feudalism was doomed. could arise only with a new enthusiasm; and that enthusiasm came after two centuries of expectation from the inspiring breath of Italian culture and the classical Renaissance. Good work might but presently the They felt that the It took no prophet to But a new literature In poetry this intervening period counts the notable names of Charles d'Orléans and François Villon1 in 1 Orléans, b. 1391, d. 1465. Villon, b. 1431, d. about 1463. a numerous company, whose ingenuity was exercised less over matter than form. It has been said that "their poetry was all technique, and all their technique was difficulty." They invented a great number of metrical arrangements, more or less artificial, such as the ballade, with its equivocal and retrograde variations, the rondeau, rondel, triolet, virelay, and the chanson royal,1 which some English poets are exercising their skill to imitate to-day, so that these men enjoy a sort of esoteric cult and some real revival of popularity. For no one can read D'Orléans' graceful, nonchalant verses without delight, though their ethical value is of the slightest, and the fickle muse surely deserts him if ever he presumes to be serious. Bitter experience of the uncertainties of politics had made him pay for the honor of a high command at Azincourt with a long imprisonment in England, whence he returned a devoted disciple of the god Nonchaloir, and felt no more pressing duty than to set up a poetic court at Blois, where the best talent of the age was soon assembled. As " an idle singer of an empty day," he had quite peculiar gifts. His favorite subjects are the changing seasons and light-hearted lover's fancies, with counsels against melancholy and care, and exhortations. to friendship and good-humor. D'Orléans is never great, but he is nearly always healthy and cheerful. The Parisian Villon strikes a deeper note. He was a greater and a more original poet, though a less worthy man. Poor as Rutebœuf, he was even more of a reckless vagabond; and his best work, like his predecessor's, was in satires, his "Testaments," in which he made mock bequests to various friends and enemies, with autobiographical details and allusions that are 1 These metrical forms are briefly described in Lanson, p. 142, note. interesting whenever they happen to be still intelligible. The chief attraction of Villon to-day, however, is the short poems interspersed in these long satires, some of which bid fair to maintain their place among the best lyrics of the world. The "Ballad of the Ladies of Long-Ago,” with its refrain, “ But where are last year's snows," 1 is familiar to all lovers of poetry. Almost as famous is the "Epitaph in the form of a Ballad which Villon wrote for himself and his Companions when expecting to be hung with them." In this poem of death there is an antinomy of grim humor and naïve pathos that can hardly be excelled. But though in our own day Villon has been called "the first French writer who is frankly and completely modern,” he will always be the poet of the few, the poets' poet, and "caviare to the general." After his death French poetry grew steadily more artificial, endeavoring to atone by self-imposed restraints for the lack of genius to rise above them, precisely as the Mastersingers were doing in contemporary Germany, and with much the same result. Meantime, in the drama, the brilliant innovations of Adam de la Halle remained unfruitful for a time, while the Miracle Play was developing into the Mystery, where a freer use of allegory and mythology fostered originality and encouraged associations of actors independent of the clergy, or at least apart from them. Such companies were quicker to anticipate or respond to popular demands; and in the fifteenth century they presented not only the " Fall of Troy," but the very recent siege of Orleans, and the national heroine Joan of Arc, whose ashes were hardly cold. But the esprit gaulois has 1 Mais où sont les neiges d'antan (Ballade des dames du temps jadis). |