their influence in their own country was the greatest. They were the first expression of the spirit which has since animated the most national and popular developments of French literature. Simple and unpretending as they are in form, the fabliaux announce not merely the _Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles_ and the _Heptameron_, _L'Avocat Patelin_, and _Pantagruel_, but also _L'Avare_ and the _Roman comique_, _Gil Blas_ and _Candide_. They indeed do more than merely prophesy the spirit of these great performances--they directly lead to them. The prose-tale and the farce are the direct outcomes of the fabliau, and the prose-tale and the farce once given, the novel and the comedy inevitably follow. Social importance of fabliaux. The special period of fabliau composition appears to have been the 12th and 13th centuries. It signifies on the one side the growth of a lighter and more sportive spirit than had yet prevailed, on another the rise in importance of other and lower orders of men than the priest and the noble, on yet another the consciousness on the part of these lower orders of the defects of the two privileged classes, and of the shortcomings of the system of polity under which these privileged classes enjoyed their privileges. There is, however, in the fabliau proper not so very much of direct satire, this being indeed excluded by the definition given above, and by the thoroughly artistic spirit in which that definition is observed. The fabliaux are so numerous and so various that it is difficult to select any as specially representative. We may, however, mention, both as good examples and as interesting from their subsequent history, _Le Vair Palfroi_, treated in English by Leigh Hunt and by Peacock; _Le Vilain Mire_, the original consciously or unconsciously followed in _Le Medecin malgre lui_; _Le Roi d'Angleterre et le jongleur d'Eli_; _La houce partie_; _Le Sot Chevalier_, an indecorous but extremely amusing story; _Les deux bordeors ribaus_, a dialogue between two jongleurs of great literary interest, containing allusions to the chansons de geste and romances most in vogue; and _Le vilain qui conquist paradis par plait_, one of the numerous instances of what has unnecessarily puzzled moderns, the association in medieval times of sincere and unfeigned faith with extremely free handling of its objects. This lightheartedness in other subjects sometimes bubbled over into the _fatrasie_, an almost pure nonsense-piece, parent of the later _amphigouri_.