boration of words, he has succeeded in evoking with an extraordinary,
naked vividness the scenes of strife and heroism which he describes. At
his best--in the lines of farewell between Roland and Oliver, and the
well-known account of Roland's death--he rises to a restrained and
severe pathos which is truly sublime. This great work--bleak, bare,
gaunt, majestic--stands out, to the readers of to-day, like some huge
mass of ancient granite on the far horizon of the literature of France.

While the _Chansons de Geste_ were developing in numerous cycles of
varying merit, another group of narrative poems, created under different
influences, came into being. These were the _Romans Bretons_, a series
of romances in verse, inspired by the Celtic myths and traditions which
still lingered in Brittany and England. The spirit of these poems was
very different from that of the _Chansons de Geste_. The latter were the
typical offspring of the French genius--positive, definite,
materialistic; the former were impregnated with all the dreaminess, the
mystery, and the romantic spirituality of the Celt. The legends upon
which they were based revolved for the most part round the history of
King Arthur and his knights; they told of the strange adventures of
Lancelot, of the marvellous quest of the Holy Grail, of the overwhelming
and fatal loves of Tristan and Yseult. The stories gained an immense
popularity in France, but they did not long retain their original
character. In the crucible of the facile and successful CHRETIEN DE
TROYES, who wrote towards the close of the twelfth century, they assumed
a new complexion; their mystical strangeness became transmuted into the
more commonplace magic of wizards and conjurers, while their elevated,
immaterial conception of love was replaced by the superfine affectations
of a mundane gallantry. Nothing shows more clearly at what an early
date, and with what strength, the most characteristic qualities of
French literature were developed, than the way in which the vague
imaginations of the Celtic romances were metamorphosed by French writers
into the unambiguous elegances of civilized life.

Both the _Chansons de Geste_ and the _Romans Bretons_ were aristocratic
literature: they were concerned with the life and ideals--the martial
prowess, the chivalric devotion, the soaring honour--of the great nobles
of the age. But now another form of literature arose which depicted, in
short verse narratives, the mo