erial
from all quarters--the North of Europe and the Eastern world--had
been gradually fused. In the artistic treatment of such material the
chief difficulty lies in preserving a just measure between the
beast-character and the imported element of humanity. Little by
little the anthropomorphic features were developed at the expense
of verisimilitude; the beast forms became a mere masquerade; the
romances were converted into a satire, and the satire lost rather
than gained by the inefficient disguise.

The earliest branches of the cycle have reached us only in a
fragmentary way, but they can be in part reconstructed from the Latin
_Isengrinus_ of Nivard of Ghent (about 1150), and from the German
_Reinhart Fuchs_, a rendering from the French by an Alsatian, Henri
le Glichezare (about 1180). The wars of Renard and Isengrin are here
sung, and the failure of Renard's trickeries against the lesser
creatures; the spirit of these early branches is one of frank gaiety,
untroubled by a didactic or satirical intention. In the branches of
the second period the parody of human society is apparent; some of
the episodes are fatiguing in their details; some are intolerably
gross, but the poem known as the Branch of the Judgment is masterly--an
ironical comedy, in which, without sacrifice of the primitive
character of the beast-epic, the spirit of mediaeval life is
transported into the animal world. Isengrin, the accuser of Renard
before King Noble and his court, is for a moment worsted; the fox
is vindicated, when suddenly enters a funeral cortege--Chanticleer
and his four wives bear upon a litter the dead body of one of their
family, the victim of Renard's wiles. The prayers for the dead are
recited, the burial is celebrated with due honour, and Renard is
summoned to justice; lie heaped upon lie will not save him; at last
he humbles himself with pious repentance, and promising to seek God's
pardon over-sea, is permitted in his pilgrim's habit to quit the court.
It is this Judgment of Renard which formed the basis of the _Reineke
Fuchs_, known to us through the modernisation of Goethe.

From the date of the Branch of the Judgment the Renard Romances
declined. The Judgment was imitated by inferior hands, and the beasts
were more and more nearly transformed to men; the spirit of gaiety
was replaced by seriousness or gloom; Renard ceased to be a
light-footed and ingenious rogue; he became a type of human fraud
and cruelty; whatever in