able mediaeval embellishments,
among others the first mention in French of the quest for the Fountain
of Youth.

Later on in French literature we come across the animal epic, or Roman
du Renard, a style of composition which found its latest and most
finished expression in Germany at the hands of Goethe, and the
allegorical epic, Le Roman de la Rose, wherein abstract ideas were
personified, such as Hope, Slander (Malebouche), Danger, etc.

There are also epic poems based on Le Combat des Trente and on the
doings of Du Guesclin. Ronsard, in his Franciade, claims the Franks as
lineal descendants from Francus, a son of Priam, and thus connects
French history with the war of Troy, just as Wace, in the Norman Roman
de Rou, traces a similar analogy between the Trojan Brutus and
Britain. Later French poets have attempted epics, more or less popular
in their time, among which are Alaric by Scuderi, Clovis by St.
Sorlin, and two poems on La Pucelle, one by Chapelain, and the other
by Voltaire.

Next comes la Henriade, also by Voltaire, a half bombastic, half
satirical account of Henry IV's wars to gain the crown of France. This
poem also contains some very fine and justly famous passages, but is
too long and too artificial, as a whole, to please modern readers.

The most popular of all the French prose epics is, without dispute,
Fenelon's Telemaque, or account of Telemachus' journeys to find some
trace of his long-absent father Ulysses.

Les Martyrs by Chateaubriand, and La Legende des Siecles by Victor
Hugo, complete the tale of important French epics to date.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 7: See the author's "Legends of the Middle Ages."]

THE SONG OF ROLAND[8]

_Introduction._ The earliest and greatest of the French epics, or
chansons de geste, is the song of Roland, of which the oldest copy now
extant is preserved in the Bodleian Library and dates back to the
twelfth century. Whether the Turoldus (Theroulde) mentioned at the end
of the poem is poet, copyist, or mere reciter remains a matter of
conjecture.

The poem is evidently based on popular songs which no longer exist. It
consists of 4002 verses, written in langue d'oil, grouped in stanzas
or "laisses" of irregular length, in the heroic pentameter, having the
same assonant rhyme, and each ending with "aoi," a word no one has
succeeded in translating satisfactorily. It was so popular that it was
translated into Latin and German (1173-1177), and our version ma