attain
till Chaucer's day, and then lost again for more than another century.
Further, the grouping and finishing of these lines is not less
remarkable, and is even more distinctive than their internal
construction. They are not blank; they are not in couplets; they are
not in equal stanzas; and they are not (in the earliest examples, such
as _Roland_) regularly rhymed. But they are arranged in batches
(called in French _laisses_ or _tirades_) of no certain number, but
varying from one to several score, each of which derives unity from an
_assonance_--that is to say, a vowel-rhyme, the consonants of the
final syllable varying at discretion. This assonance, which appears to
have been common to all Romance tongues in their early stages,
disappeared before very long from French, though it continued in
Spanish, and is indeed the most distinguishing point of the prosody of
that language. Very early in the _chansons_ themselves we find it
replaced by rhyme, which, however, remains the same for the whole of
the _laisse_, no matter how long it is. By degrees, also, the
ten-syllabled line (which in some examples has an octosyllabic
tail-line not assonanced at the end of every _laisse_) gave way in its
turn to the victorious Alexandrine. But the mechanism of the _chanson_
admitted no further extensions than the substitution of rhyme for
assonance, and of twelve-syllabled lines for ten-syllabled. In all
other respects it remained rigidly the same from the eleventh century
to the fourteenth, and in the very latest examples of such poems, as
_Hugues Capet_ and _Baudouin de Seboure_--full as enthusiasts like M.
Gautier complain that they are of a spirit very different from that of
the older _chansons_--there is not the slightest change in form; while
certain peculiarities of stock phrase and "epic repetition" are
jealously preserved. The immense single-rhymed _laisses_, sometimes
extending to several pages of verse, still roll rhyme after rhyme with
the same sound upon the ear. The common form generally remains; and
though the adventures are considerably varied, they still retain a
certain general impress of the earlier scheme.

[Footnote 20: _Editio princeps_ by Fr. Michel, 1837. Since that time
it has been frequently reprinted, translated, and commented. Those who
wish for an exact reproduction of the oldest MS. will find it given by
Stengel (Heilbronn, 1878).]

[Sidenote: _Their scheme of matter._]

[Sidenote: _The character o