e been philologically
studied for nearly three-quarters of a century, despite (or perhaps
because of) the enthusiasm which one or two devotees have shown for
their literary qualities, it does not seem to me that fair justice, or
anything like it, has yet been generally done. German critics care
little for literary merit, and are perhaps not often trained to
appreciate it; in England the _chansons_ have been strangely little
read. But the most singular thing is the cold reception, slightly if
at all thawed recently, which they have met in France itself. It may
give serious pause to the very high estimate generally entertained of
French criticism by foreigners to consider this coldness, which once
reached something like positive hostility in M. Ferdinand Brunetiere,
the chief French literary critic of our generation. I regret to see
that M. Lanson, the latest historian of French literature, has not
dared to separate himself from the academic _grex_. "On ne saurait
nier," he says, "que quelques uns aient eu du talent;" but he
evidently feels that this generous concession is in need of guards and
caveats. There is no "beaute formelle" in them, he says--no formal
beauty in those magnificently sweeping _laisses_, of which the ear
that has once learnt their music can no more tire thereafter than of
the sound of the sea itself. The style (and if it be objected that his
previous words have been directly addressed to the later _chansons_
and _chanson_ writers, here he expressly says that this style "est le
meme style que dans le _Roland_," though "moins sobre, moins plein,
moins sur") has "no beauty by itself," and finally he thinks that the
best thing to do is "to let nine-tenths of the _chansons_ follow
nine-tenths of our tragedies." I have read many _chansons_ and many
tragedies; but I have never read a _chanson_ that has not more poetry
in it than ninety-nine French tragedies out of a hundred.

The fact is that it is precisely the _beaute formelle_, assisted as it
is by the peculiar spirit of which so much has been said already,
which constitutes the beauty of these poems: and that these
characteristics are present, not of course in uniform measure, but
certainly in the great majority of the _chansons_ from _Roland_ to the
_Bastard_. Of course if a man sits down with a preconceived idea of an
epic poem, it is more likely than not that his preconceived idea will
be of something very different from a _chanson de geste_. And if,