ny literary interest.

History, however, was by no means the only serious subject which took
this incongruous form in the middle ages. The amount of miscellaneous
verse written during the period between the end of the eleventh and the
beginning of the fifteenth century is indeed enormous. Only a very small
portion of it has ever been printed, and the mere summary description of
the manuscripts which contain it is as yet far from complete. If it be
said generally that, during the greater part of these three hundred
years, the first impulse of any one who wished to write, no matter on
what subject, was to write in verse, and that the popular notion of the
want of literary tastes in the middle ages is utterly mistaken, some
idea may be formed of the vast extent of literature, poetical in form,
which was then produced. Much no doubt of this literature is not in the
least worthy of detailed notice; much, whether worthy or not, must from
mere considerations of space and proportion remain unnoticed here. What
is possible, is to indicate briefly the chief forms, authors, and
subjects, which fall under the heading of this chapter, and to give a
somewhat detailed account of the great serious poem of mediaeval France,
the _Roman de la Rose_. Peculiarities of metre and so forth will be
indicated where it is necessary, but it may be said generally that the
great mass of this literature is in octosyllabic couplets.

[Sidenote: Miscellaneous Satirical Verse.]

It has already been observed in discussing the Fabliaux that the first
enquirers into old French literature were led to include a very
miscellaneous assortment of poems under that head; and it may now be
added that this miscellaneous assortment with much else constitutes the
_farrago_ of the present chapter. The two great poems of the _Roman du
Renart_ and the _Roman de la Rose_ stand as representatives of the more
or less serious poetry of the time, and everything else may be said to
be included between them. Beginning nearest to the _Roman du Renart_ and
its kindred Fabliaux, we find a vast number of half-satirical styles of
poetry, many, if not most of them, known (according to what has been
noted in the preface as characteristic of mediaeval literature) by
distinctive form-names. Of these _dits_ and _debats_ have already been
noticed, but it is not easy to give a notion of the number of the
existing examples, or of the extraordinary diversity of subjects to
which both, and