igality to minstrels of which we have record parallels
itself in other times in regard to actors, jockeys, musicians, and
other classes of mechanical pleasure-makers whose craft happens to be
popular for the moment. And it was never more likely to be shown than
in the Middle Ages, when generosity was a profane virtue; when the
Church had set the example--an example the too free extension of
which she resented highly--of putting reckless giving above almost all
other good deeds; and when the system of private war, of ransoms and
other things of the same kind, made "light come, light go," a maxim
almost more applicable than in the days of confiscations, in those of
pensions on this or that list, or in those of stock-jobbing. Moreover,
inquirers into this matter have certainly not escaped the besetting
sin of all but strictly political historians--a sin which even the
political historian has not always avoided--the sin of mixing up times
and epochs.

It is the great advantage of that purely literary criticism, which is
so little practised and to some extent so unpopular, that it is able
to preserve accuracy in this matter. When with the assistance (always
to be gratefully received) of philologists and historians in the
strict sense the date of a literary work is ascertained with
sufficient--it is only in a few cases that it can be ascertained with
absolute--exactness, the historian of literature places it in that
position for literary purposes only, and neither mixes it with other
things nor endeavours to use it for purposes other than literary. To
recur to an example mentioned above, Adeline in the eleventh century
and Gracieuse d'Espagne in the fifteenth are agreeable objects of
contemplation and ornaments of discourse; but, once more, neither has
much, if anything, to do with literature.

[Sidenote: _Singularity of the_ chansons.]

We may therefore with advantage, having made this digression to comply
a little with prevalent fashions, return to the _chansons_ themselves,
to the half-million or million verses of majestic cadence written in
one of the noblest languages, for at least first effect, to be found
in the history of the world, possessing that character of distinction,
of separate and unique peculiarity in matter and form, which has such
extraordinary charm, and endowed besides, more perhaps than any other
division, with the attraction of presenting an utterly vanished Past.
The late Mr Froude found in church-