pieces which these societies represented one only, that of _Maitre Patelin_, is now much known; but many are almost equally amusing. _Patelin_ itself has an immense number of versions and editions. Other farces are too numerous to attempt to classify; they bear, however, in their subjects, as in their manner, a remarkable resemblance to the fabliaux, their source. Conjugal disagreements, the unpleasantness of mothers-in-law, the shifty or, in the earlier stages, clumsy valet and chambermaid, the mishaps of too loosely given ecclesiastics, the abuses of relics and pardons, the extortion, violence, and sometimes cowardice of the seigneur and the soldiery, the corruption of justice, its delays and its pompous apparatus, supply the subjects. The treatment is rather narrative than dramatic in most cases, as might be expected, but makes up by the liveliness of the dialogue for the deficiency of elaborately planned action and interest. All these forms, it will be observed, are directly or indirectly comic. Tragedy in the middle ages is represented only by the religious drama, except for a brief period towards the decline of that form, when the "profane" mysteries referred to above came to be represented. These were, however, rather "histories," in the Elizabethan sense, than tragedies proper. Early chronicles. Villehardouin. Joinville. _Prose History._--In France, as in all other countries of whose literary developments we have any record, literature in prose is considerably later than literature in verse. We have certain glosses or vocabularies possibly dating as far back as the 8th or even the 7th century; we have the Strassburg oaths, already described, of the 9th, and a commentary on the prophet Jonas which is probably as early. In the 10th century there are some charters and muniments in the vernacular; of the 11th the laws of William the Conqueror are the most important document; while the _Assises de Jerusalem_ of Godfrey of Bouillon date, though not in the form in which we now possess them, from the same age. The 12th century gives us certain translations of the Scriptures, and the remarkable Arthurian romances already alluded to; and thenceforward French prose, though long less favoured than verse, begins to grow in importance. History, as is natural, was the first subject which gave it a really satisfactory opportunity of developing its powers. For a time the French chroniclers contented themselves with Latin prose or with French verse, after the fashion of Wace and the Belgian, Philippe Mouskes (1215-1283). These, after a fashion universal in medieval times, began from fabulous or merely literary origins, and just as Wyntoun later carries back the history of Scotland to the terrestrial paradise, so does Mouskes start that of France from the rape of Helen. But soon prose chronicles, first translated, then original, became common; the earliest of all is said to have been that of the pseudo-Turpin, which thus recovered in prose the