Italian allegories-Spanish and Judæo-Spanish moralists-Arabian culture-Piers Plowman-Religious poetry-The Fioretti of THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. CHAPTER I. THE END OF COURT-POETRY. CAUSES OF DECLINE-'ENFANCES'-REVOLUTIONARY SPIRIT-CYCLICAL POEMS FRANCO-ITALIAN EPICS-FRENCH PATRIOTIC VERSE-ROMANS D'AVENTURE- 'CENTO NOVELLE ANTICHE' THE AVVENTUROSO CICILIANO'-THE 'REALI DI FRANCIA'-GERMAN EPICS-ICELANDIC RÍMUR FORNSÖGUR AND LYGISÖGUR - -ENGLISH ROMANCES ALLITERATIVE POETRY-SCOTTISH ROMANCES-THE 'BRUCE'-LAURENCE MINOT. How came the old poetry-epic, romance, minnesong -to die out as it did in the fourteenth century? Was Who killed it suffocated by adverse outward conditions, court-poetry? or had it completed its natural term of life? Perhaps it is not necessary to choose between these solutions. It seems probable that more than one cause was at work. That there were hostile agencies abroad cannot be doubted. In this task of A destruction, this intellectual vandalism, the clergy, the traditional and bitter foes of the secular poet, were more or less conscious tools, while the master-singers contributed to the same result by their ineptitude. Then there was the rise, both economic and political, of the middle class. The importance of this factor in the overthrow of court-verse 1 cannot well be overestimated. Already in the reign of Frederick II. a wandering gleeman, Freidank, had scented the offence and revenged it in advance. His antipathy found vent in opprobrious terms. The knights, the clergy, and the peasants were the orders created by God. The fourth, or trading, class was of the Devil. Over and above these external enemies, however, it is possible to detect in the court-poetry of the fourteenth and concluding portion of the thir Internal decay. teenth century many signs of decaysigns that are strictly parallel with evidences of old age in the individual. "The gay poets of the Middle Age," remarks M. Dinaux,2 "began with singing love and its delights; later they turned into verse the tales, the histories, and the fabliaux of the country; then, when age and infirmities overtook them, they fell back on sacred and philosophic subjects." He adds that the 1 The words "court-verse,' 39 66 court-poetry," &c., though in universal use on the Continent, have been adopted not without misgivings. The terms are new, and have been censured as exaggerating the influence of courts on the poetry in question. The diminution of this influence, however, was of capital importance in the transformations poetry was now to undergo. 2 Trouvères du Nord de la France et du Midi de la Belgique, vol. iv. p. 51. gay poets did not always observe these "time-limits,' and that, in general, their compositions exhibit a fine medley of the worldly and other-worldly. The speech and confession of a typical trouvère, Hugues de Bersil, explain this apparent contradiction by the real contradiction of preaching and practice: Hugues de Bersil qui tant a M. Dinaux refers to a tendency only; and in these lines the tendency is clear enough. We also have to do with a tendency, and another French writer, quite independently, sums up the character of the fourteenth century in the words: "Every discourse is practically a sermon. To speak is to preach. In the art of preaching lies the whole art of speaking." True, on the whole; and yet, in its inconsistencies, the period resembles the gay poets. Outstanding inconsistencies are the futile attempts of epic and romance to survive and thrive in this uncongenial atmosphere; and convenience suggests that these failures be noted first. To the decadent lyric, naturally more capable of adaptation, will be consecrated the ensuing chapter. One striking feature of the "death-struck" epic is |