mentions of certain _cantilenae_ or ballads; and it
has been assumed by some scholars that the earliest _chansons_ were
compounded out of precedent ballads of the kind. It is unnecessary to
inform those who know something of general literary history, that this
theory (that the corruption of the ballad is the generation of the
epic) is not confined to the present subject, but is one of the
favourite fighting-grounds of a certain school of critics. It has been
applied to Homer, to _Beowulf_, to the Old and Middle German Romances,
and it would be very odd indeed if it had not been applied to the
_Chansons de geste_. But it may be said with some confidence that not
one tittle of evidence has ever been produced for the existence of any
such ballads containing the matter of any of the _chansons_ which do
exist. The song of Roland which Taillefer sang at Hastings may have
been such a ballad: it may have been part of the actual _chanson_; it
may have been something quite different. But these "mays" are not
evidence; and it cannot but be thought a real misfortune that, instead
of confining themselves to an abundant and indeed inexhaustible
subject, the proper literary study of what does exist, critics should
persist in dealing with what certainly does not, and perhaps never
did. On the general point it might be observed that there is rather
more positive evidence for the breaking up of the epic into ballads
than for the conglomeration of ballads into the epic. But on that
point it is not necessary to take sides. The matter of real importance
is, to lay it down distinctly that we _have_ nothing anterior to the
earliest _chansons de geste_; and that we have not even any
satisfactory reason for presuming that there ever was anything.

[Sidenote: _Their metrical form._]

One of the reasons, however, which no doubt has been most apt to
suggest anterior compositions is the singular completeness of form
exhibited by these poems. It is now practically agreed that--scraps
and fragments themselves excepted--we have no monument of French in
accomplished profane literature more ancient than the _Chanson de
Roland_.[20] And the form of this, though from one point of view it
may be called rude and simple, is of remarkable perfection in its own
way. The poem is written in decasyllabic iambic lines with a caesura at
the second foot, these lines being written with a precision which
French indeed never afterwards lost, but which English did not