of chapter.

[69] This miscellaneous lyric for the most part awaits collection and
publication. M. G. Raynaud has given a valuable _Bibliographie des
Chansonniers Francais des XIII'e et XIV'e siecles_. 2 vols., Paris,
1884. Also a collection of _motets_. Paris, 1881.

[70] Philippe Mouskes. This is it:

La terre fut pis en cest an
Quar li vieux Quesnes estoit mors.

[71] The best edition is in Scheler's _Trouveres Belges_. Brussels,
1876.

[72] Rheims, 1851.

[73] The most convenient place to look for Adam's history and work is
_Le Theatre Francais au Moyen Age_. Par Monmerque et Michel. Paris,
1874. There are also separate editions of him by Coussemaker, and more
recently by A. Rambeau. Marburg, 1886.

[74] By A. Jubinal. 2nd edition. 3 vols. Paris, 1874.

[75] Ed. Roquefort. 2 vols. Paris, 1820. The first volume contains the
lays; the later the fables, which have been noticed in the last chapter.
Later edition, Warnke. Halle, 1885. Marie also wrote a poem on the
Purgatory of St. Patrick. Three other lays, _Tidorel_, _Gringamor_, and
_Tiolet_ have been attributed to her, and are printed in _Romania_, vol.
viii.

[76] _Lays of France_, London, 1872.

CHAPTER VII.

SERIOUS AND ALLEGORICAL POETRY.

In consequence of the slowness with which prose was used for any regular
literary purpose in France, verse continued to do duty for it until a
comparatively late period in almost all departments of literature. By
the very earliest years of the twelfth century, and probably much
earlier (though we have no certain evidence of this latter fact),
documents of all kinds began to be written in verse of various forms.
Among the earliest serious verse that was written rank, as we might
expect, verse chronicles. It was not till 1200 at soonest that long
translations from the Latin in French prose were made, but such
translations, and original works as well, were written in French verse
long before.

[Sidenote: Verse Chronicles.]

The rhymed Chronicles were numerous, but, with rare exceptions, they
cannot be said to be of any very great literary importance. Whether they
were imitated directly from the Chansons de Gestes, or _vice versa_, is
a question which, as it happens, can be settled without difficulty. For
they are almost all in octosyllabic couplets, a metre certainly later
than the assonanced decasyllabics of the earliest Chansons. The latter
form and the somewhat later dodecasyllable or Alexan