t in most, if not in all of them, is
extremely remarkable. What is most noticeable in this spirit is the
perpetual undertone of satirical comment on human life and its affairs
which distinguishes it. The moral is never obtrusively put forward, and
it is especially noteworthy that in this _Ancien Renart_, as contrasted
with the later development of the poem, there is no mere allegorising,
and no attempt to make the animals men in disguise. They are quite
natural and distinct foxes, wolves, cats, and so forth, acting after
their kind, with the exception of their possession of reason and
language.

[Sidenote: Le Couronnement Renart.]

The next stage of the composition shows an alteration and a degradation.
_Renart le Couronne_, or _Le Couronnement Renart_[63], is a poem of some
3400 lines, which was once attributed to Marie de France, for no other
reason than that the manuscript which contains it subjoins her _Ysopet_
or fables. It is, however, certainly not hers, and is in all probability
a little later than her time. The main subject of it is the cunning of
the fox, who first reconciles the great preaching orders Franciscans and
Dominicans; then himself becomes a monk, and inculcates on them the art
of _Renardie_; then repairs to court as a confessor to the lion king
Noble who is ill, and contrives to be appointed his successor, after
which he holds tournaments, journeys to Palestine, and so forth. It is
characteristic of the decline of taste that in the list of his army a
whole bestiary (or list of the real and fictitious beasts of mediaeval
zoology) is thrust in; and the very introduction of the abstract term
_Renardie_, or foxiness, is an evil sign of the abstracting and
allegorising which was about to spoil poetry for a time, and to make
much of the literature of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries tedious
and heavy. The poem is of little value or interest. The only
chronological indication as to its composition is the eulogy of William
of Flanders, killed ('jadis,' says the author) in 1251.

[Sidenote: Renart le Nouvel.]

The next poem of the cycle is of much greater length, and of at least
proportionately greater value, though it has not the freshness and
_verve_ of the earlier branches. _Renart le Nouvel_ was written in 1288
by Jacquemart Gielee, a Fleming. This poem is in many ways interesting,
though not much can be said for its general conception, and though it
suffers terribly from the allegorising alre