who thus, at nearly
the sixteen-thousandth line from the beginning, recovers through the
help of False Seeming the 'gracious reception' which is to lead him to
the rose. The castle, however, is not taken, and Dangier, with the rest
of his allegorical company, makes a stout resistance to 'Les Barons de
L'Ost'--the lords of Love's army. The god sends to invoke the aid of his
mother, and this introduces a new personage. Nature herself, and her
confidant, Genius, are brought on the scene, and nearly five thousand
verses serve to convey all manner of thoughts and scraps of learning,
mostly devoted to the support, as before, of questionably moral
doctrines. In these five thousand lines almost all the current ideas of
the middle ages on philosophy and natural science are more or less
explicitly contained. Finally, Venus arrives and, with her burning
brand, drives out Dangier and his crew, though even at this crisis of
the action the writer cannot refrain from telling the story of Pygmalion
and the Image at length. The way being clear, the lover proceeds
unmolested to gather the longed-for rose.

[Sidenote: Popularity of the Roman de la Rose.]

It is impossible to exaggerate, and not easy to describe, the popularity
which this poem enjoyed. Its attacks on womanhood and on morality
generally provoked indeed not a few replies, of which the most important
came long afterwards from Christine de Pisan and from Gerson. But the
general taste was entirely in favour of it. Allegorical already, it was
allegorised in fresh senses, even a religious meaning being given to it.
The numerous manuscripts which remain of it attest its popularity before
the days of printing. It was frequently printed by the earliest
typographers of France, and even in the sixteenth century it received a
fresh lease of life at the hands of Marot, who re-edited it. Abroad it
was praised by Petrarch and translated by Chaucer[88]; and it is on the
whole not too much to say that for fully two centuries it was the
favourite book in the vernacular literature of Europe. Nor was it
unworthy of this popularity. As has been pointed out, the grace of the
part due to William of Lorris is remarkable, and the satirical vigour of
the part due to Jean de Meung perhaps more remarkable still. The
allegorising and the length which repel readers of to-day did not
disgust generations whose favourite literary style was the allegorical,
and who had abundance of leisure; but the real s