cresegu qu'ero lou souiras.

S'eron de gent resounable,
Vendrien sens estre envita:
Trouvarien dins un petit estable
La lumiero emai la verita."[24]{11}

As for La Monnoye, here is a translation of one of his satirical
verses:--"When in the time of frost Jesus Christ came into the world the
ass and ox warmed Him with their breath in the stable. How many asses and
oxen I know in this kingdom of Gaul! How many asses and oxen I know who
would not have done as much!"{12}

* * * * *

Apart from the rustic _Noels_, the eighteenth century produced little
French Christmas poetry of any charm. Some of the carols most sung in
French churches to-day belong, however, to this period, _e.g._, the
"Venez, divin Messie" of the Abbe Pellegrin.{13}

* * * * *

One cannot leave the France of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
without some mention of its Latin hymnody. From a date near 1700,
apparently, comes the sweet and solemn "Adeste, fideles"; by its music
and its rhythm, perhaps, rather than by its actual words it has become
the best beloved of Christmas hymns. The present writer has heard it sung
with equal reverence and heartiness in English, German, French, and
Italian churches, and no other hymn seems so full of the spirit of
Christmas devotion--wonder, |64| awe, and tenderness, and the sense of
reconciliation between Heaven and earth. Composed probably in France,
"Adeste, fideles" came to be used in English as well as French Roman
Catholic churches during the eighteenth century. In 1797 it was sung at
the chapel of the Portuguese Embassy in London; hence no doubt its once
common name of "Portuguese hymn." It was first used in an Anglican church
in 1841, when the Tractarian Oakley translated it for his congregation at
Margaret Street Chapel, London.

Another fine Latin hymn of the eighteenth-century French Church is
Charles Coffin's "Jam desinant suspiria."{14} It appeared in the
Parisian Breviary in 1736, and is well known in English as "God from on
high hath heard."

* * * * *

The Revolution and the decay of Catholicism in France seem to have killed
the production of popular carols. The later nineteenth century, however,
saw a revival of interest in the _Noel_ as a literary form. In 1875 the
bicentenary of Saboly's death was celebrated by a competition for a
_Noel_ in the Provencal tongue, and somethin