of incongruity occurs. The illustrations of Meon's _Renart_,
which show us the fox painfully clasping in his forelegs a stick four
times his own length, show the inferiority of the nineteenth century.
Renart may beat _le vilain_ (everybody beats the poor _vilain_) as
hard as he likes in the old French text; it comes all naturally. A
neat copper-plate engraving, in the best style of sixty or seventy
years ago, awakes distrust.

[Sidenote: _The satire of_ Renart.]

The general fable is so familiar that not much need be said about it.
But it is, I think, not unfair to say that the German and Flemish
versions, from the latter of which Caxton's and all later English
forms seem to be copied, are, if better adjusted to a continuous
story, less saturated with the quintessence of satiric criticism of
life than the French _Renart_. The fault of excessive coarseness of
thought and expression, which has been commented on in the _fabliaux_,
recurs here to the fullest extent; but it is atoned for and sweetened
by an even greater measure of irony. As to the definite purposes of
this irony it would not be well to be too sure. The passage quoted on
a former page will show with what completely fearless satire the
_trouveres_ treated Church and State, God and Man. It is certain that
they had no love of any kind for the clergy, who were not merely their
rivals but their enemies; and it is not probable they had much for the
knightly order, who were their patrons. But it is never in the very
least degree safe to conclude, in a mediaeval writer, from that satire
of abuses, which is so frequent, to the distinct desire of reform or
revolution, which is so rare. The satire of the _Renart_--and it is
all the more delightful--is scarcely in the smallest degree political,
is only in an interesting archaeological way of the time ecclesiastical
or religious; but it is human, perennial, contemptuous of mere time
and circumstance, throughout.

[Sidenote: _The Fox himself._]

It cannot, no doubt, be called kindly satire--French satire very
rarely is. Renart, the only hero, though a hero sometimes uncommonly
hard bested, is a furred and four-footed Jonathan Wild. He appears to
have a creditable paternal affection for Masters Rovel, Percehaie, and
the other cubs; and despite his own extreme licence of conjugal
conduct, only one or two branches make Dame Hermeline, his wife,
either false to him or ill-treated by him. In these respects, as in
the other