. Of his life we know little; Jean Clopinel was born at Meun
on the Loire about the year 1240; he died before the close of 1305;
his continuation of Guillaume's _Roman_ was made about 1270. His later
poems, a _Testament_, in which he warned and exhorted his
contemporaries of every class, the _Codicille_, which incited to
almsgiving, and his numerous translations, prove the unabated energy
of his mind in his elder years.

The rose is plucked by the lover in the end; but lover and rose are
almost forgotten in Jean's zeal in setting forth his views of life,
and in forming an encyclopaedia of the knowledge of his time. Reason
discourses on the dangers of passion, commends friendship or
universal philanthropy as wiser than love, warns against the
instability of fortune and the deceits of riches, and sets charity
high above justice; if love be commendable, it is as the device of
nature for the continuation of the species. The way to win woman and
to keep her loyalty is now the unhappy way of squandered largess;
formerly it was not so in the golden age of equality, before private
property was known, when all men held in common the goods of the earth,
and robber kings were evils of the future. The god of Love and his
barons, with the hypocrite monk Faux-Semblant--a bitter satirist of
the mendicant orders--besiege the tower in which Bel-Accueil is
imprisoned, and by force and fraud an entrance is effected. The old
beldame, who watches over the captive, is corrupted by promises and
gifts, and frankly exposes her own iniquities and those of her sex.
War is waged against the guardians of the rose, Venus, sworn enemy
of chastity, aiding the assailants. Nature, devoted to the
continuance of the race, mourns over the violation of her laws by
man, unburdens herself of all her scientific lore in a confession
to her chaplain Genius, and sends him forth to encourage the lover's
party with a bold discourse against the crime of virginity. The
triumph of the lover closes the poem.

The graceful design of the earlier poet is disregarded; the love-story
becomes a mere frame for setting forth the views of Jean de Meun,
his criticism of the chivalric ideal, his satire upon the monkish
vices, his revolutionary notions respecting property and government,
his advanced opinions in science, his frank realism as to the
relations of man and woman. He possesses all the learning of his time,
and an accomplished judgment in the literature which he had s