though, as has been said, a more complicated state of
society appears in the Arthurian legends, what may be called their
atmosphere is even more artificial.

[Sidenote: The Esprit Gaulois makes its appearance.]

It is far otherwise with the division of literature which we are now
about to handle. The Fabliaux[60], or short verse tales of old France,
take in the whole of its society from king to peasant with all the
intervening classes, and represent for the most part the view taken of
those classes by each other. Perhaps the _bourgeois_ standpoint is most
prominent in them, but it is by no means the only one. Their tone too is
of the kind which has ever since been specially associated with the
French genius. What is called by French authors the _esprit gaulois_--a
spirit of mischievous and free-spoken jocularity--does not make its
appearance at once, or in all kinds of work. In most of the early
departments of French literature there is a remarkable deficiency of the
comic element, or rather that element is very much kept under. The
comedy of the Chansons consists almost entirely in the roughest
horse-play; while the knightly notion of _gabz_ or jests is exemplified
in the _Voyage de Charlemagne a Constantinople_, where it seems to be
limited to extravagant, and not always decent, boasts and gasconnades.
More comic, but still farcical in its comedy, is the curious running
fire of exaggerated expressions of poltroonery which the Red Lion keeps
up in _Antioche_, while the names and virtues of the Christian leaders
are being catalogued to Corbaran. In the Arthurian Romances also the
comic element is scantily represented, and still takes the same form of
exaggeration and horse-play. At the same time it is proper to say that
both these classes of compositions are distinguished, at least in their
earlier examples, by a very strict and remarkable decency of language.

In the Fabliaux the state of things is quite different. The attitude is
always a mocking one, not often going the length of serious satire or
moral indignation, but contenting itself with the peculiar ludicrous
presentation of life and humanity of which the French have ever since
been the masters. In the Fabliaux begins that long course of scoffing at
the weaknesses of the feminine sex which has never been interrupted
since. In the Fabliaux is to be found for the first time satirical
delineation of the frailties of churchmen instead of adoring celebration
of th