‘Car mieulx amont la soule mie Ove l’aise q’est appartenant, C’est du solail q’est eschaulfant, Et du sachel acostoiant, Et du buisson l’erbergerie, Que labourer pour leur vivant’ &c. (5801 ff.) Other descriptions also have merit, as for example that of the procession of the Vices to their wedding, each being arrayed and mounted characteristically (841 ff.), a scene which it is interesting to compare with the somewhat similar passage of Spenser, _Faery Queene_, i. 4, that of Murder rocked in her cradle by the Devil and fed with milk of death (4795), and that of Fortune smiling on her friends and frowning on her enemies (22081 ff.). Contemplation is described as one who loves solitude and withdraws herself from the sight, but it is not that she may be quite alone: she is like the maiden who in a solitary place awaits her lover, by whose coming she is to have joy in secret (10597 ff.). The truly religious man, already dead in spirit to this world, desires the death of the body ‘more than the mariner longs for his safe port, more than the labourer desires his wage, the husbandman his harvest, or the vine-dresser his vintage, more than the prisoner longs for his ransoming and deliverance, or the pilgrim who has travelled far desires his home-coming’ (10645 ff.). Such passages as these show both imagination and the power of literary expression, and the stanzas which describe the agony of the Saviour are not wholly unworthy of their high subject: ‘Par ce q’il ot le corps humein Et vist la mort devant la mein, Tant durement il s’effroia, Du quoy parmy le tendre grein Du char les gouttes trestout plein Du sanc et eaue alors sua; Si dist: O piere, entendes ça, Fai que la mort me passera, Car tu sur tout es soverein; Et nepourqant je vuil cela Que vous vuilletz que fait serra, Car je me tiens a toy certein.’ (28669 ff.) The man who wrote this not only showed some idea of the dignified handling of a tragic theme, but also had considerable mastery over the instruments that he used; and in fact the technical skill with which the stanza is used is often remarkable. There is sometimes a completeness and finish about it which takes us by surprise. The directions which our author gives us for a due confession of our sins are not exactly poetical, but the manner in which all the various points of _Quomodo_ are wrapped up in a stanza, and rounded off at the end of it (14869 ff.) is decidedly neat; and the same may be said of the reference to the lives of the holy fathers, as illustrating the nature of ‘Aspre vie’: