and to some extent of treatment, might be regarded as separate poems. The history of Renart, his victories over Isengrim, the wolf, Bruin, the bear, and his other unfortunate rivals, his family affection, his outwittings of King Noble the Lion and all the rest, are too well known to need fresh description here. It is perhaps in the subsequent poems, though they are far less known and much less amusing, that the hold which the idea of Renart had obtained on the mind of northern France, and the ingenious uses to which it was put, are best shown. The first of these is _Le Couronnement Renart_, a poem of between 3000 and 4000 lines, attributed, on no grounds whatever, to the poetess Marie de France, and describing how the hero by his ingenuity got himself crowned king. This poem already shows signs of direct moral application and generalizing. These are still more apparent in _Renart le Nouvel_, a composition of some 8000 lines, finished in the year 1288 by the Fleming Jacquemart Gielee. Here the personification, of which, in noticing the _Roman de la rose_, we shall soon have to give extended mention, becomes evident. Instead of or at least beside the lively personal Renart who used to steal sausages, set Isengrim fishing with his tail, or make use of Chanticleer's comb for a purpose for which it was certainly never intended, we have _Renardie_, an abstraction of guile and hypocrisy, triumphantly prevailing over other and better qualities. Lastly, as the _Roman de la rose_ of William of Lorris is paralleled by _Renart le Nouvel_, so its continuation by Jean de Meung is paralleled by the great miscellany of _Renart le Contre-fait_, which, even in its existing versions, extends to fully 50,000 lines. Here we have, besides floods of miscellaneous erudition and discourse, political argument of the most direct and important kind. The wrongs of the lower orders are bitterly urged. They are almost openly incited to revolt; and it is scarcely too much to say, as M. Lenient has said, that the closely following Jacquerie is but a practical carrying out of the doctrines of the anonymous satirists of _Renart le Contre-fait_, one of whom (if indeed there was more than one) appears to have been a clerk of Troyes. Audefroit le Bastard. Thibaut de Champagne. Ruteboef. Adam de la Halle. Lais.