ne pair of eyes. As the individual study
of different literatures deepens and widens, these surveys may be more
and more difficult: they may have to be made more and more "by
allowance." But they are also more and more useful, not to say more
and more necessary, lest a deeper and wider ignorance should accompany
the deeper and wider knowledge.

The dangers of this ignorance will hardly be denied, and it would be
invidious to produce examples of them from writings of the present
day. But there can be nothing ungenerous in referring--_honoris_, not
_invidiae causa_--to one of the very best literary histories of this or
any century, Mr Ticknor's _Spanish Literature_. There was perhaps no
man of his time who was more widely read, or who used his reading with
a steadier industry and a better judgment, than Mr Ticknor. Yet the
remarks on assonance, and on long mono-rhymed or single-assonanced
tirades, in his note on Berceo (_History of Spanish Literature_, vol.
i. p. 27), show almost entire ignorance of the whole prosody of the
_chansons de geste_, which give such an indispensable light in
reference to the subject, and which, even at the time of his first
edition (1849), if not quite so well known as they are to-day,
existed in print in fair numbers, and had been repeatedly handled by
scholars. It is against such mishaps as this that we are here doing
our best to supply a guard.[1]

[Footnote 1: One of the most difficult points to decide concerned the
allowance of notes, bibliographical or other. It seemed, on the whole,
better not to overload such a Series as this with them; but an attempt
has been made to supply the reader, who desires to carry his studies
further, with references to the best editions of the principal texts
and the best monographs on the subjects of the different chapters. I
have scarcely in these notes mentioned a single book that I have not
myself used; but I have not mentioned a tithe of those that I have
used.]

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

THE FUNCTION OF LATIN.

Reasons for not noticing the bulk of mediaeval Latin literature.
Excepted divisions. Comic Latin literature. Examples of its verbal
influence. The value of burlesque. Hymns. The _Dies Irae_. The rhythm
of Bernard. Literary perfection of the Hymns. Scholastic Philosophy.
Its influence on phrase and method. The great Scholastics 1

CHAPTER II.

CHANSONS DE GESTE.

European literature in 1100. Late discovery of the _ch