Des fisiciens me merveil: de lor huevre et de lor conseil rai ge certes mont grant merveille, nule vie ne s'apareille a la lor, trop par est diverse et sor totes autres perverse. bien les nomme li communs nons; mais je ne cuit qu'i ne soit hons qui ne les doie mont douter. il ne voudroient ja trover nul home sanz aucun mehaing. maint oingnement font e maint baing ou il n'a ne senz ne raison, cil eschape d'orde prison qui de lor mains puet eschaper. qui bien set mentir et guiler et faire noble contenance, tout ont trove fors la creance que les genz ont lor fait a bien. tiex mil se font fisicien qui n'en sevent voir nes que gie. li plus maistre sont mont changie de grant ennui, n'il n'est mestiers dont il soit tant de mencongiers. il ocient mont de la gent: ja n'ont ne ami ne parent que il volsissent trover sain; de ce resont il trop vilain. mont a d'ordure en ces liens. qui en main a fisiciens, se met par els. il m'ont eu entre lor mains: onques ne fu, ce cuit, nule plus orde vie. je n'aim mie lor compaignie, si m'ait dex, qant je sui sains: honiz est qui chiet en lor mains. par foi, qant je malades fui, moi covint soffrir lor ennui. _Testaments_ of the satirical kind, chiefly noteworthy for the brilliant use which Villon made of the tradition of composing them, _resveries_ and _fatrasies_ (nonsense poems with a more or less satirical drift), parodies of the offices of the Church, of its sermons, of the miracle plays, are the chief remaining divisions of the poetry which, under a light and scoffing envelope, conceals a serious purpose. [Sidenote: Didactic verse. Philippe de Thaun.] Such things have at all times been composed in verse, and the reason is sufficiently obvious. In the first place, the intention of the writers is to a certain extent masked, and in the second, the reader's attention is attracted. But the middle ages by no means confined the use of verse to such cases. Downright instruction was, as often as not, the object of the verse writer in those days. The earliest, and as such the most curious of didactic poems, are those of Philippe de Thaun, an Englishman of Norman extraction, who wrote in the first quarter of the twelfth century. His two works are a _Comput_, or Chronological Treatise, dedicated to an uncle of his, who was chaplain to Hugh Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, and a _Bestiary_, or Zoological Catalogue, dedicated to Adela of Louvain, the wife of Henry the First. Written before the vogue of the versified Arthurian Romances had consecrated the octosyllable, these poems are in couplets of six syllables. Their great age, and to a certain extent their literary merit, deserve an extract:--