ts first appearance. And though the "lubricity" of these poems is
free from some ugly features which appear after the Italian wars of
the late fifteenth century, it has never been more frankly destitute
of shamefacedness.

[Sidenote: _Their wit._]

It would, however, be extremely unfair to let it be supposed that the
_fabliaux_ contain nothing but obscenity, or that they can offer
attractions to no one save those whom obscenity attracts. As in those
famous English followings of them, where Chaucer considerably reduced
the licence of language, and still more considerably increased the
dose of wit--the Reeve's and Miller's sections of the _Canterbury
Tales_--the lack of decency is very often accompanied by no lack of
sense. And a certain proportion, including some of the very best in a
literary point of view, are not exposed to the charge of any
impropriety either of language or of subject.

[Sidenote: _Definition and subjects._]

There is, indeed, no special reason why the _fabliau_ should be
"improper" (except for the greater ease of getting a laugh) according
to its definition, which is capable of being drawn rather more sharply
than is always the case with literary kinds. It is a short tale in
verse--almost invariably octosyllabic couplets--dealing, for the most
part from the comic point of view, with incidents of ordinary life.
This naturally admits of the widest possible diversity of subject:
indeed it is only by sticking to the condition of "ordinary life" that
the _fabliau_ can be differentiated from the short romance on one side
and the allegoric beast-fable on the other. Even as it is, its most
recent editors have admitted among their 157 examples not a few which
are simple _jeux d'esprit_ on the things of humanity, and others which
are in effect short romances and nothing else. Of these last is the
best known of all the non-Rabelaisian _fabliaux_, "Le Vair Palefroi,"
which has been Englished by Leigh Hunt and shortly paraphrased by
Peacock, while examples of the former may be found without turning
very long over even one of M. M. de Montaiglon and Raynaud's pretty
and learned volumes. A very large proportion, as might be expected,
draw their comic interest from satire on priests, on women, or on
both together; and this very general character of the _fabliaux_
(which, it must be remembered, were performed or recited by the very
same _jongleurs_ who conducted the publication of the _chansons de
geste_ and th