especially the _dits_, extend. Perhaps some estimate may
be formed from the fact that the _dits_ of three Flemish poets alone,
Baudouin de Conde, Jean de Conde, and Watriquet de Couvin, fill four
stout octavo volumes[83]. The subjects of these and of the large number
of _dits_ composed by other writers and anonymous are almost
innumerable. The earliest are for the most part simple enumerations of
the names of streets, of street cries, of guilds, of coins, and
such-like things. By degrees they become more definitely didactic, and
at last allegorical moralising masters them as it does almost every
other kind of poetry in the fourteenth century. The _debat_, sometimes
called _dispute_, or _bataille_, is an easily understood variety of the
_dit_. Ruteboeuf's principal _debat_ has been named; another in a less
serious spirit is that between _Charlot et le Barbier_. There is a
_Bataille des Vins_, a _Bataille de Careme et de Charnage_, a _Debat de
l'Hiver et l'Ete_, etc., etc. Another name much used for half-satirical,
half-didactic verse was that of _Bible_, of which the most famous
(probably because it was the first known) is that of Guyot de
Provins,--a violent onslaught on the powers that were in Church and
State by a discontented monk. An extract from it will illustrate this
division of the subject as well as anything else:--

Des fisiciens me merveil:
de lor huevre et de lor conseil
rai ge certes mont grant merveille,
nule vie ne s'apareille
a la lor, trop par est diverse
et sor totes autres perverse.
bien les nomme li communs nons;
mais je ne cuit qu'i ne soit hons
qui ne les doie mont douter.
il ne voudroient ja trover
nul home sanz aucun mehaing.
maint oingnement font e maint baing
ou il n'a ne senz ne raison,
cil eschape d'orde prison
qui de lor mains puet eschaper.
qui bien set mentir et guiler
et faire noble contenance,
tout ont trove fors la creance
que les genz ont lor fait a bien.
tiex mil se font fisicien
qui n'en sevent voir nes que gie.
li plus maistre sont mont changie
de grant ennui, n'il n'est mestiers
dont il soit tant de mencongiers.
il ocient mont de la gent:
ja n'ont ne ami ne parent
que il volsissent trover sain;
de ce resont il trop vilain.
mont a d'ordure en ces liens.
qui en main a fisiciens,
se met par els. il m'ont eu
entre lor mains: onques ne fu,