e mysteries of the Church. All classes come in by turns for
ridicule--knights, burghers, peasants. Unfortunately this freedom in
choice of subject is accompanied by a still greater freedom in the
choice of language. The coarseness of expression in many of the Fabliaux
equals, if it does not exceed, that to be found in any other branch of
Western literature.

[Sidenote: Definition of Fabliaux.]

The interest of the Fabliaux as a literary study is increased by the
precision with which they can be defined, and the well-marked period of
their composition. According to the excellent definition of its latest
editor, the Fabliau[61] is 'le recit, le plus souvent comique, d'une
aventure reelle ou possible, qui se passe dans les donnees moyennes de
la vie humaine,' the recital, for the most part comic, of a real or
possible event occurring in the ordinary conditions of human life. M. de
Montaiglon, to be rigidly accurate, should have added that it must be in
verse, and, with very rare, if any, exceptions, in octosyllabic
couplets. Of such Fabliaux, properly so called, we possess perhaps two
hundred. They are of the most various length, sometimes not extending to
more than a score or so of lines, sometimes containing several hundreds.
They are, like most contemporary literature, chiefly anonymous, or
attributed to persons of whom nothing is known, though some famous
names, especially that of the Trouvere Ruteboeuf, appear among their
authors. Their period of composition seems to have extended from the
latter half of the twelfth century to the latter half of the fourteenth,
no manuscript that we have of them being earlier than the beginning of
the thirteenth century, and none later than the beginning of the
fifteenth. If, however, their popularity in their original form ceased
at the latter period, their course was by no means run. They had passed
early from France into Italy (as indeed all the oldest French literature
did), and the stock-in-trade of all the Italian _Novellieri_ from
Boccaccio downwards was supplied by them. In England they found an
illustrious copyist in Chaucer, whose Canterbury Tales are perfect
Fabliaux, informed by greater art and more poetical spirit than were
possessed by their original authors. In France itself the Fabliaux
simply became farces or prose tales, as the wandering reciter of verse
gave way to the actor and the bookseller. They appear again (sometimes
after a roundabout journey through Italian