obability of arriving at certainty with
regard to the problems indicated in the foregoing section. We must be
content to accept the names Golias and Goliardi as we find them, and
to treat of this literature as the product of a class, from the midst
of which, as it is clear to any critic, more than one poet rose to
eminence.

One thing appears manifest from the references to the Goliardi which I
have already quoted. That is, that the Wandering Students ranked in
common estimation with jongleurs, buffoons, and minstrels. Both
classes held a similar place in medieval society. Both were parasites
devoted to the entertainment of their superiors in rank. Both were
unattached, except by occasional engagements, to any fixed abode. But
while the minstrels found their temporary homes in the castles of the
nobility, we have reason to believe that the Goliardi haunted abbeys
and amused the leisure of ecclesiastical lords.

The personality of the writer disappears in nearly all the _Carmina
Vagorum_. Instead of a poet with a name, we find a type; and the verse
is put into the mouth of Golias himself, or the Archipoeta, or the
Primate of the order. This merging of the individual in the class of
which he forms a part is eminently characteristic of popular
literature, and separates the Goliardic songs from those of the
Provencal Troubadours. The emotions to which popular poetry gives
expression are generic rather than personal. They are such that all
the world, granted common sympathies and common proclivities, can feel
them and adopt the mode of utterance invented for them by the singer.
If there be any bar to their universal acceptance, it is only such as
may belong to the peculiar conditions of the social class from which
they have emanated. The _Rispetti_ of Tuscany imply a certain form of
peasant life. The _Carmina Vagorum_ are coloured to some extent by the
prejudices and proclivities of vagabond existence.

Trenchantly true as the inspiration of a popular lyric may be,
inevitable as may be the justice of its sentiment, unerring as may be
its touch upon reality, still it lacks the note which marks it out for
one man's utterance among a thousand. Composing it, the one has made
himself the mouthpiece of the thousand. What the _Volkslied_ gains in
universality it loses in individuality of character. Its applicability
to human nature at large is obtained at the sacrifice of that
interest which belongs to special circumstances. It