vagant
supposition, and is helped by the undoubted fact that actual
translations of such collections--_Dolopathos_, the _Seven Sages of
Rome_,[133] and so forth--are found early in French, and chiefly at
second-hand from the French in other languages. But the general
tendency of mankind, reinforced and organised by a certain specially
literary faculty and adaptability in the French genius, is on the
whole sufficient to account for the _fabliau_.

[Footnote 133: For these see the texts and editorial matter of
_Dolopathos_, ed. Brunet and De Montaiglon (Bibliotheque
Elzevirienne), Paris, 1856; and of _Le Roman des Sept Sages_, ed. G.
Paris (_Soc. des Anc. Textes_), Paris, 1875. The English _Seven Sages_
(in Weber, vol. iii.) has been thought to be of the thirteenth
century. The _Gesta Romanorum_ in any of its numerous forms is
probably later.]

[Sidenote: _Their licence._]

It presents, as we have said, the most striking and singular contrast
to the Lyric poems which we have just noticed. The technical morality
of these is extremely accommodating, indeed (in its conventional and
normal form) very low. But it is redeemed by an exquisite grace and
charm, by true passion, and also by a great decency and accomplishment
of actual diction. Coarse language--very rare in the romances, though
there are a few examples of it--is rarer still in the elaborate formal
lyric of the twelfth and thirteenth century in French. In the
_fabliaux_, which are only a very little later, and which seem not to
have been a favourite form of composition very long after the
fourteenth century had reached its prime, coarseness of diction,
though not quite invariable, is the rule. Not merely are the subjects,
in the majority of cases, distinctly "broad," but the treatment of
them is broader still. In a few instances it is very hard to discern
any wit at all, except a kind similar to that known much later in
England as "selling bargains"; and almost everywhere the words which,
according to a famous classical French tag, _bravent l'honnetete_, in
Latin, the use of which a Roman poet has vaunted as _Romana
simplicitas_, and which for some centuries have been left alone by
regular literature in all European languages till very recently,--appear
to be introduced on purpose as part of the game. In fact, it is in the
_fabliau_ that the characteristic which Mr Matthew Arnold selected as
the opprobrium of the French in life and literature practically makes
i