nd holy water has been thrown on him, and
Bruin is just going to shovel the earth--behold! Reynard wakes up,
catches Chanticleer (who is holding the censer) by the neck, and bolts
into a thick pleached plantation. Still, despite this resurrection,
his good day is over, and a levee _en masse_ of the Lion's people soon
surrounds him, catches him up, and forces him to release Chanticleer,
who, nothing afraid, challenges him to mortal combat on fair terms,
beats him, and leaves him for dead in the lists. And though he manages
to pay Rohart the Raven and his wife (who think to strip his body) in
kind, he reaches Malpertuis dead-beat; and we feel that even his last
shift and the faithful complaisance of Grimbart will never leave him
quite the same Fox again.

The defects which distinguish almost all mediaeval poetry are no doubt
discoverable here. There is some sophistication of the keeping in the
episodes of Coart and Chanticleer, and the termination is almost too
audacious in the sort of choice of happy or unhappy ending, triumph or
defeat for the hero, which it leaves us. Yet this very audacity suits
the whole scheme; and the part dealing with the death (or swoon) and
burial is assuredly one of the best things of its kind in French,
almost one of the best things in or out of it. The contrast between
the evident delight of the beasts at getting rid of Renart and their
punctilious discharge of ceremonial duties, the grave parody of rites
and conventions, remind us more of Swift or Lucian than of any French
writer, even Rabelais or Voltaire. It happened that some ten or twelve
years had passed between the time when the present writer had last
opened _Renart_ (except for mere reference now and then) and the time
when he refreshed his memory of it for the purposes of the present
volume. It is not always in such cases that the second judgment
exactly confirms the first; but here, not merely in the instance of
this particular branch but almost throughout, I can honestly say that
I put down the _Roman de Renart_ with even a higher idea of its
literary merit than that with which I had taken it up.

[Sidenote: _The_ Romance of the Rose.]

The second great romance which distinguishes the thirteenth century in
France stands, as we may say, to one side of the _Roman de Renart_ as
the _fabliaux_ do to the other side. But, though complex in fewer
pieces, the _Roman de la Rose_[142] is, like the _Roman de Renart_, a
complex, not a sing