"On peut dire que la _Chanson de Roland_ (ainsi que toutes nos plus anciennes chansons de geste) se développe non pas, comme les poèmes homériques, par un courant large et ininterrompu, non pas, comme le _Nibelungenlied_, par des battements d'ailes égaux et lents, mais par un suite d'explosions successives, toujours arrêtées court et toujours reprenant avec soudaineté" (_Litt. fr. au moyen âge_, p. 59). _Roland_ is a succession of separate scenes, with no gradation or transition between them. It still bears traces of the lyrical origins of epic. But the narrative, though broken, is neither stinted nor laboured; it does not, like _Beowulf_, give the impression that it has been expanded beyond the convenient limits, and that the author is scant of breath. And none of the later _chansons de geste_ are so restricted and reserved in their design as _Roland_; most of them are diffuse and long. The French and the Teutonic epics are at opposite extremes of style. The French epics are addressed to the largest conceivable audience.[69] They are plain and simple, as different as possible from the allusive brevity of the Northern poems. Even the plainest of the old English poems, even _Maldon_, has to employ the poetical diction, the unprosaic terms and figures of the Teutonic School. The alliterative poetry down to its last days has a vocabulary different from that of prose, and much richer. The French epic language is not distinguished and made difficult in this way; it is "not prismatic but diaphanous." Those who could understand anything could understand it, and the _chansons de geste_ easily found currency in the market-place, when they were driven by the new romances from their old place of honour in "bower and hall." The Teutonic poetry, even at its simplest, must have required more attention in its hearers than the French, through the strangeness and the greater variety of its vocabulary. It is less familiar, less popular. Whatever dignity may be acquired by the French epic is not due to any special or elaborate convention of phrase. Where it is weak, its poverty is not disguised, as in the weaker portions of Teutonic poetry, by the ornaments and synonyms of the _Gradus_. The commonplaces of French epic are not imposing.[70] With this difference between the French and the Teutonic conventions, there is all the more interest in a comparison of the two kinds, where they come into comparison through any resemblance of their subjects or their thought, as in _Byrhtnoth_ and _Roland_. [Footnote 69: G. Paris, Preface to _Histoire de la littérature française_, edited by L. Petit de Julleville.] [Footnote 70: See the preface to _Raoul de Cambrai_, ed. Paul Meyer (Anc. Textes), for examples of such _chevilles_; and also _Aimeri de Narbonne_, p. civ.]