XXIV.

CHAP. the departed perishes from our bosoms, and they become to us our brother-men, living, It is thus that in reading

Lorris.

moving and real.
of
passages great animation and fire in the
best authors, we seem to hold direct com-
munion with the author himself, and can
scarcely be persuaded that the heart which
dictated such passages has ceased to beat,
and the eye which sparkled with such senti-
ments has ceased to glisten.-The discourse
of the God of Love to his vassal is in many
respects so curious and important, that it has
been thought proper to insert it in the Ap-
pendix to this volume".

William de On the whole it may safely be affirmed that the first 2950 verses of William de Lorris may challenge a comparison with most of the happiest effusions of the genius of poetry: they exhibit an admirable variety of talent; and it will be found difficult to pronounce from the perusal, whether the

XXIV.

author excels most in the richness of his de- CHAP. scriptive powers, in the spirit and force of his allegorical paintings, or in the acuteness and exactness of his observations upon life and manners.

VOL. II.

S

;

CHAP. XXV.

ROMANCE OF THE ROSE CONTINUED.
UPON THE MENDICANTS.

CHAP.
XXV.

THE

John de

Metin.

part of the Roman de la Rose which was written by John de Meun is much more miscellaneous, and has infinitely less of the poetical spirit, than the part written by his predecessor. It is however by no means

destitute of merit. The author has admitted into it an unbounded variety of matter, and made it the vehicle of all his satire, of all his observation upon life and manners, and perhaps of all his learning. Many classical stories are interspersed; and several of them, as the editor of 1735 has justly re

XXV.

marked," are introduced in so unconnected CHAP. and extraordinary a manner, that any other place in the poem would have suited them as well, as that in which they are inserted'.'

a

blant: sa

One of the individuals in the army of the False-semGod of Love is False-semblant, the offspring

of Guile, begotten upon Hypocrisy. From the introduction of this personage John de Meun takes occasion in more than a thousand verses to pour out his spleen against the mendicant friars. False-semblant is made to give an account of himself to his commander, and in this account the poet has interwoven his satire upon religious imposture. He digresses into the history of William de St. Amour a distinguished polemical champion, and of all the principal controversies occasioned by the institution and proceedings of the mendicant orders. As this

tire upon

the men

dicant

friars,

• Preface: Economie et Ordre de ce Roman,

XXV.

CHAP history strongly tends to illustrate the manners and sentiments of these early ages, and is connected with certain transactions in which Chaucer was afterward engaged, a few pages of this work cannot be more profitably spent than in illustrating it.

Revival of learning in the twelfth

"The revival of learning" is a phrase which for a considerable time past has been century. almost exclusively appropriated to the period of the taking of Constantinople, and the

age
of Leo X. It has already appeared that
the same phrase might without any striking
impropriety be applied to the twelfth cen-
tury. It was then that the night which
threatened to bury all Europe in barbarism
began to be dissipated; it was then that
certain literary adventurers imported from
the Saracens science, the investigation of
nature, and the Aristotelian philosophy; it
was then that romance was invented, and
poetry seemed to be new created; and it
was this period which was illustrated by
the labours of Abelard, William of Malmes-
bury, Peter of Blois, John of Salisbury and