s mediaevally
kept. The justice or the injustice, the taste or the vulgarity, of
these moralisings, of these felicitations, may not concern us here.
But in expression, as distinguished from thought, the value of the
discipline to which these youthful languages were subjected is not
likely now to be denied by any scholar who has paid attention to the
subject. It would have been perhaps a pity if thought had not gone
through other phases; it would certainly have been a pity if the
tongues had all been subjected to the fullest influence of Latin
constraint. But that the more lawless of them benefited by that
constraint there can be no doubt whatever. The influence of form which
the best Latin hymns of the Middle Ages exercised in poetry, the
influence in vocabulary and in logical arrangement which Scholasticism
exercised in prose, are beyond dispute: and even those who will not
pardon literature, whatever its historical and educating importance
be, for being something less than masterly in itself, will find it
difficult to maintain the exclusion of the _Cur Deus Homo_, and
impossible to refuse admission to the _Dies Irae_.

CHAPTER II.

CHANSONS DE GESTE.[15]

[Footnote 15: I prefer, as more logical, the plural form _chansons de
gestes_, and have so written it in my _Short History of French
Literature_ (Oxford, 4th ed., 1892), to which I may not improperly
refer the reader on the general subject. But of late years the fashion
of dropping the _s_ has prevailed, and, therefore, in a book meant for
general reading, I follow it here. Those who prefer native authorities
will find a recent and excellent one on the whole subject of French
literature in M. Lanson, _Histoire de la Litterature Francaise_,
Paris, 1895. For the mediaeval period generally M. Gaston Paris, _La
Litterature Francaise au Moyen Age_ (Paris, 1888), speaks with
unapproached competence; and, still narrowing the range, the subject
of the present chapter has been dealt with by M. Leon Gautier, _Les
Epopees Francaises_ (Paris, 4 vols., 1878-92), in a manner equally
learned and loving. M. Gautier has also been intrusted with the
section on the _Chansons_ in the new and splendidly illustrated
collection of monographs (Paris: Colin) which M. Petit de Julleville
is editing under the title _Histoire de la Langue et de la Litterature
Francaise_. Mr Paget Toynbee's _Specimens of Old French_ (Oxford,
1892) will illustrate this and the following chapters.]