s of the _Chevalier au Cygne_--_Baudouin de
Seboure_, and the _Bastart de Bouillon_; _Hugues Capet_, a very lively
and readable but slightly vulgar thing, exhibiting an almost
undisguised tone of parody; and some fragments known by the names of
_Hernaut de Beaulande_, _Renier de Gennes_, &c. As for fifteenth and
sixteenth century work, though some pieces of it, especially the very
long and unprinted poem of _Lion de Bourges_, are included in the
canon, all the _chanson_-production of this time is properly
apocryphal, and has little or nothing left of the _chanson_ spirit,
and only the shell of the _chanson_ form.

[Sidenote: Chansons _in print._]

It must further be remembered that, with the exception of a very few
in fragmentary condition, all these poems are of great length. Only
the later or less genuine, indeed, run to the preposterous extent of
twenty, thirty, or (it is said in the case of _Lion de Bourges_) sixty
thousand lines. But _Roland_ itself, one of the shortest, has four
thousand; _Aliscans_, which is certainly old, eight thousand; the
oldest known form of _Huon_, ten thousand. It is probably not
excessive to put the average length of the older _chansons_ at six
thousand lines; while if the more recent be thrown in, the average of
the whole hundred would probably be doubled.

This immense body of verse, which for many reasons it is very
desirable to study as a whole, is still, after the best part of a
century, to a great extent unprinted, and (as was unavoidable) such of
its constituents as have been sent to press have been dealt with on no
very uniform principles. It was less inevitable, and is more to be
regretted, that the dissensions of scholars on minute philological
points have caused the repeated printing of certain texts, while
others have remained inaccessible; and it cannot but be regarded as a
kind of petty treason to literature thus to put the satisfaction of
private crotchets before the "unlocking of the word-hoard" to the
utmost possible extent. The earliest _chansons_ printed[23] were, I
believe, M. Paulin Paris's _Berte aus grans Pies_, M. Francisque
Michel's _Roland_; and thereafter these two scholars and others edited
for M. Techener a very handsome set of "Romances des Douze Pairs," as
they were called, including _Les Saisnes_, _Ogier_, _Raoul de
Cambrai_, _Garin_, and the two great crusading _chansons_, _Antioche_
and _Jerusalem_. Other scattered efforts were made, such as the
publi