ive name of the language.

Side by side with the southern _troubadours_, or a little later than
they, the _trouveres_ of the north sang, with more manly ambition, of
national themes, and, like Virgil, of arms and of heroes. Some
productions of the _trouveres_ may fairly be allowed an elevation of aim
and of treatment entitling them to be called epic in character.
_Chansons de geste_ (songs of exploit), or _romans_, is the native name
by which those primitive French poems are known. They exist in three
principal cycles, or groups, of productions,--one cycle composed of
those pertaining to Charlemagne; one, of those pertaining to British
Arthur; and a third, of those pertaining to ancient Greece and Rome,
notably to Alexander the Great. The cycle revolving around the majestic
legend of Charlemagne for its centre was Teutonic, rather than Celtic,
in spirit as well as in theme. It tended to the religious in tone. The
Arthurian cycle was properly Celtic. It dealt more with adventures of
love. The Alexandrian cycle, so named from one principal theme
celebrated,--namely, the deeds of Alexander the Great,--mixed
fantastically the traditions of ancient Greece and Rome with the then
prevailing ideas of chivalry, and with the figments of fairy lore. (The
metrical form employed in these poems gave its name to the Alexandrine
line later so predominant in French poetry.) The volume of this
quasi-epical verse, existing in its three groups, or cycles, is immense.
So is that of the satire and the allegory in metre that followed. From
this latter store of stock and example, Chaucer drew to supply his muse
with material. The _fabliaux_, so called,--fables, that is, or
stories,--were still another form of early French literature in verse.
It is only now, within the current decade of years, that a really ample
collection of _fabliaux_--hitherto, with the exception of a few printed
volumes of specimens, extant exclusively in manuscript--has been put
into course of publication. Rutebeuf, a _trouvere_ of the reign of St.
Louis (Louis IX., thirteenth century), is perhaps as conspicuous a
personal name as any that thus far emerges out of the sea of practically
anonymous early French authorship. A frankly sordid and mercenary
singer, Rutebeuf, always tending to mockery, was not seldom
licentious,--in both these respects anticipating, as probably also to
some extent by example conforming, the subsequent literary spirit of his
nation. The _fabliaux