aps in the sculpture of the Early Empire on one side, and in certain
aspects of Latin literature on another. The history of mediaeval art is
the history of the long development from what are generally rude forms
to the highly developed art of the thirteenth century, a development
full of incidents and experiments and variety. I have called the early
form rude, but the phrase is not very happy, as those who know either
the early mosaic or the early epic will understand.

There are still some people, I suppose, who think that mediaeval poetry
was all of one kind, cast in one mould, but the truth is that it is of
every form and character. It ranges from the bold imaginative realism of
the Epic of England, Iceland, Germany, and France, to the exquisite and
gracious but somewhat artificial allegory of the _Romance of the Rose_.
It includes the first great emotional poetry of the modern world--the
sense of the greatness and tragedy of human passion has perhaps never
been expressed in more moving terms than in the _Tristan and Iseult_ of
Thomas or Beroul--but it also includes the mordant satire of the Renard
poetry and of Jean de Meun, and the gross realistic humour of the
Fabliaux. The mediaeval drama, in whose complex development we have to
trace many strands, probably represents in its oldest forms the coarse
farcical buffoonery which may be related to the last fashions of the
ancient world; it received a new impulse from the dramatization of
scripture history in the twelfth century; but in the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries, at least in France, it had already become
substantially a drama of romantic or contemporary life, as we can see in
Jean Bodel's _Jeu de St. Nicholas_, in Adam de la Halle's _Jeu de la
Feuillee_ and _Robin et Marion_, and in dramas like the _Empress of
Rome_ or the _Otho_. Whatever criticism we might want to make on
mediaeval literature, at least we cannot say that it was of one type and
of one mood.

It is hardly necessary to point out the movement and changes in the
other forms of art in the Middle Ages; it is only necessary to remind
ourselves that, while we can see that the artists were often hampered by
inadequate technical knowledge, they were not conventional or merely
imitative.

It would be impossible here to consider the history of mosaic painting,
and its development from the decadent Graeco-Roman work of Santa
Pudenziana in Rome, to the magnificent and living decorations of St.
Mark'