s treatment from
persons who demand "messages," "meanings," and so forth, others will
find message and meaning enough in his allegorical presentation of the
perennial quest, of "the way of a man with a maid," and more than
enough beauty in the pictures with which he has adorned it. He is
indeed the first great word-painter of the Middle Ages, and for
long--almost to the close of them--most poets simply copied him, while
even the greatest used him as a starting-point and source of
hints.[148] Also besides pictures he has music--music not very
brilliant or varied, but admirably matching his painting, soft,
dreamy, not so much monotonous as uniform with a soothing uniformity.
Few poets deserve better than William of Lorris the famous hyperbole
which Greek furnished in turn to Latin and to English. He is indeed
"softer than sleep," and, as soft sleep is, laden with gracious and
various visions.

[Footnote 148: The following of the Rose would take a volume, even
treated as the poem itself is here. The English version has been
referred to: Italian naturalised it early in a sonnet cycle, _Il
Fiore_. Every country welcomed it, but the actual versions are as
nothing to the imitations and the influence.]

[Sidenote: _Marie de France and Ruteboeuf._]

The great riches of French literature at this time, and the necessity
of arranging this history rather with a view to "epoch-making" kinds
and books than to interesting individual authors, make attention to
many of these latter impossible here. Thus Marie de France[149] yields
to few authors of our two centuries in charm and interest for the
reader; yet for us she must be regarded chiefly as one of the
practitioners of the fable, and as the chief practitioner of the
_Lai_, which in her hands is merely a subdivision of the general
romance on a smaller scale. So, again, the _trouvere_ Ruteboeuf, who
has been the subject of critical attention, a little disproportionate
perhaps, considering the vast amount of work as good as his which has
hardly any critical notice, but still not undeserved, must serve us
rather as an introducer of the subject of dramatic poetry than as an
individual, though his work is in the bulk of it non-dramatic, and
though almost all of it is full of interest in itself.

[Footnote 149: See note above, p. 286.]

Ruteboeuf[150] (a name which seems to be a professional _nom de
guerre_ rather than a patronymic) was married in 1260, and has devoted
one of his cha