cycle.
Jehan de Flagy wrote the spirited _Garin le Loherain_; and Jehan Bodel
of Arras _Les Saisnes_. Adenes le Roi, a _trouvere_, of whose actual
position in the world we know a little, wrote or refashioned three or
four _chansons_ of the thirteenth century, including _Berte aus grans
Pies_, and one of the forms of part of _Ogier_. Other names--Bertrand
of Bar sur Aube, Pierre de Rieu, Gerard d'Amiens, Raimbert de Paris,
Brianchon (almost a character of Balzac!), Gautier of Douai, Nicolas
of Padua (an interesting person who was warned in a dream to save his
soul by compiling a _chanson_), Herbert of Dammartin, Guillaume de
Bapaume, Huon de Villeneuve--are mere shadows of names to which in
nearly all cases no personality attaches, and which may be as often
those of mere _jongleurs_ as of actual poets.

[Sidenote: _Their performance._]

No subject, however, in connection with these _chansons de geste_ has
occupied more attention than the precise mode of what has been called
above their "authorship, publication, or performance." They are called
_chansons_, and there is no doubt at all that in their inception, and
during the earlier and better part of their history, they strictly
deserved the name, having been written not to be read but to be sung
or recited. To a certain extent, of course, this was the case with all
the lighter literature of mediaeval times. Far later than our present
period the English metrical romances almost invariably begin with the
minstrel's invocation, "Listen, lordings," varied according to his
taste, fancy, and metre; and what was then partly a tradition, was two
or three hundred years earlier the simple record of a universal
practice. Since the early days of the Romantic revival, even to the
present time, the minutest details of this singing and recitation have
been the subject of endless wrangling; and even the point whether it
was "singing" or "recitation" has been argued. In a wider and calmer
view these things become of very small interest. Singing and
recitation--as the very word recitative should be enough to remind
any one--pass into each other by degrees imperceptible to any but a
technical ear; and the instruments, if any, which accompanied the
performance of the _chansons_, the extent of that accompaniment, and
the rest, concern, if they concern history at all, the history of
music, not that of literature.

[Sidenote: _Hearing, not reading, the object._]

[Sidenote: _Effect on pro