cation of a beautiful edition of _Baudouin de Seboure_ at
Valenciennes as early as 1841; while a Belgian scholar, M. de
Reiffenberg, published _Le Chevalier au Cygne_, and a Dutch one, Dr
Jonckbloet, gave a large part of the later numbers of the Garin de
Montglane cycle in his _Guillaume d'Orange_ (2 vols., The Hague,
1854). But the great opportunity came soon after the accession of
Napoleon III., when a Minister favourable to literature, M. de
Fourtou, gave, in a moment of enthusiasm, permission to publish the
entire body of the _chansons_. Perfect wisdom would probably have
decreed the acceptance of the godsend by issuing the whole, with a
minimum of editorial apparatus, in some such form as that of our
Chalmers's Poets, the bulk of which need probably not have been
exceeded in order to give the oldest forms of every real _chanson_
from _Roland_ to the _Bastart de Bouillon_. But perfect wisdom is not
invariably present in the councils of men, and the actual result took
the form of ten agreeable little volumes, in the type, shape, and
paper of the "Bibliotheque Elzevirienne" with abundant editorial
matter, paraphrases in modern French, and the like. _Les Anciens
Poetes de la France_, as this series was called, appeared between
1858, which saw the first volume, and 1870, which fatal year saw the
last, for the Republic had no money to spare for such monarchical
glories as the _chansons_. They are no contemptible possession; for
the ten volumes give fourteen _chansons_ of very different ages, and
rather interestingly representative of different kinds. But they are a
very small portion of the whole, and in at least one instance,
_Aliscans_, they double on a former edition. Since then the Societe
des Anciens Textes Francais has edited some _chansons_, and
independent German and French scholars have given some more; but no
systematic attempt has been made to fill the gaps, and the pernicious
system of re-editing, on pretext of wrong selection of MSS. or the
like, has continued. Nevertheless, the number of _chansons_ actually
available is so large that no general characteristic is likely to have
escaped notice; while from the accounts of the remaining MSS., it
would not appear that any of those unprinted can rank with the very
best of those already known. Among these very best I should rank in
alphabetical order--_Aliscans_, _Amis et Amiles_, _Antioche_,
_Baudouin de Seboure_ (though in a mixed kind), _Berte aus grans
Pies_,