y were remembered; and
she appointed as her attorneys in the court of Parnassus Nicolas
Boileau-Despreaux and Francois Arouet de Voltaire!

[Footnote 131: See p. 210.]

[Sidenote: _The_ Fabliaux.]

No more curious contrast, but also none which could more clearly show
the enormous vigour and the unique variety of the French genius at
this time, can be imagined than that which is presented by the next
division to which we come--the division occupied by the celebrated
poems, or at least verse-compositions, known as _fabliaux_. These,
for reasons into which it is perhaps better not to inquire too
closely, have been longer and better known than any other division of
old French poetry. They were first collected and published a hundred
and forty years ago by Barbazan; they were much commented on by Le
Grand d'Aussy in the last years of the last century, were again
published in the earlier years of the present by Meon, and recently
have been re-collected, divested of some companions not strictly of
their kind, and published in an edition desirable in every respect by
M. Anatole de Montaiglon and M. Gaston Raynaud.[132] Since this
collection M. Bedier has executed a monograph upon them which stands
to the subject much as that of M. Jeanroy does to the Lyrics. But a
great deal of it is occupied by speculations, more interesting to the
folk-lorist than to the student of literature, as to the origin of the
stories themselves. This, though a question of apparently
inexhaustible attraction to some people, must not occupy us very long
here. It shall be enough to say that many of these subjects are hardy
perennials which meet us in all literatures, and the existence of
which is more rationally to be accounted for by the supposition of a
certain common form of story, resulting partly from the conditions of
human life and character, partly from the conformation of the human
intellect, than by supposing deliberate transmission and copying from
one nation to another. For this latter explanation is one of those
which, as has been said, only push ignorance further back; and in
fact, leave us at the last with no alternative except that which we
might have adopted at the first.

[Footnote 132: 6 vols. Paris, 1872-90.]

[Sidenote: _Their origin._]

That, however, some assistance may have been given to the general
tendency to produce the same forms by the literary knowledge of
earlier, especially Eastern, collections of tales is no extra