that he is scarcely ever outwitted, he has the advantage of
Jonathan. But otherwise I think our great eighteenth-century _maufes_
was a better fellow than Renart, because he was much less purely
malignant. I do not think that Jonathan often said his prayers; but he
probably never went to bed, as Reynard did upon the hay-mow, after
performing his devotions in a series of elaborate curses upon all his
enemies. The fox is so clever that one never dislikes him, and
generally admires him; but he is entirely compact of all that is
worst, not merely in beast-nature but in humanity. And it is a triumph
of the writers that, this being so, we at once can refrain from
disliking him, and are not tempted to like him illegitimately.

[Sidenote: _His circle._]

The _trouveres_ did not trouble themselves to work out any complete
character among the many whom they grouped round this great personage;
but they left none without touches of vivification and verisimilitude.
The female beasts--Dame Fiere or Orgueilleuse, the lioness, Hersent,
the she-wolf, Hermeline, the vixen, and the rest--are too much tinged
with that stock slander of feminine character which was so common in
the Middle Ages. And each is rather too much of a type, a fault which
may be also found with their lords. Yet all of these--Bruin and
Brichemer, Coart and Chanticleer, Tybert and Primaut, Hubert and
Roonel--have the liveliest touches, not merely of the coarsely
labelling kind, but of the kind that makes a character alive. And,
save as concerns the unfortunate capons and _gelines_ whom Renart
consumes, so steadily and with such immunity, it cannot be said that
their various misfortunes are ever incurred without a valid excuse in
poetical justice. Isengrim, the chief of them all, is an especial case
in point. Although he is Chief Constable, he is just as much of a
rascal and a malefactor as Renart himself, with the additional crime
of stupidity. One is disposed to believe that, if domiciliary visits
were made to their various abodes, Malpertuis would by no means stand
alone as a bad example of a baronial abode. Renart is indeed
constantly spoken of as Noble's "baron." Yet it would be a great
mistake to take this epic, as it has been sometimes taken, for a
protest against baronial suppression. A sense of this, no doubt,
counts--as do senses of many other oppressions that are done under the
sun. But it is the satire on life as a whole that is uppermost; and
that is wha