It is little wonder that all Europe soon tried to imitate notes so charming, and in some cases, though other languages were far behind French in development, tried successfully. Our own "Alison,"[131] the first note of true English lyric, is a "romance" of the most genuine kind; the songs of Walther von der Vogelweide, of which we have also spoken, though they may rise higher, yet owe their French originals service, hold of them, would either never or much later have come into existence but for them. An astonishing privilege for a single nation to have enjoyed, if only for a short time; a privilege almost more astonishing in its reception than even in itself. France could point to the _chansons_ and to the _romances_, to Audefroy le Bastard and Chrestien of Troyes, to Villehardouin and Thibaut, to William of Lorris and John of Meung, to the _fabliaux_ writers and the cyclists of _Renart_, in justification of her claims. She shut them up; she forgot them; she sneered at them whenever they were remembered; and she appointed as her attorneys in the court of Parnassus Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux and Francois Arouet de Voltaire! [Footnote 131: See p. 210.] [Sidenote: _The_ Fabliaux.] No more curious contrast, but also none which could more clearly show the enormous vigour and the unique variety of the French genius at this time, can be imagined than that which is presented by the next division to which we come--the division occupied by the celebrated poems, or at least verse-compositions, known as _fabliaux_. These, for reasons into which it is perhaps better not to inquire too closely, have been longer and better known than any other division of old French poetry. They were first collected and published a hundred and forty years ago by Barbazan; they were much commented on by Le Grand d'Aussy in the last years of the last century, were again published in the earlier years of the present by Meon, and recently have been re-collected, divested of some companions not strictly of their kind, and published in an edition desirable in every respect by M. Anatole de Montaiglon and M. Gaston Raynaud.[132] Since this collection M. Bedier has executed a monograph upon them which stands to the subject much as that of M. Jeanroy does to the Lyrics. But a great deal of it is occupied by speculations, more interesting to the folk-lorist than to the student of literature, as to the origin of the stories themselves. This, though a question of apparently inexhaustible attraction to some people, must not occupy us very long here. It shall be enough to say that many of these subjects are hardy perennials which meet us in all literatures, and the existence of which is more rationally to be accounted for by the supposition of a certain common form of story, resulting partly from the conditions of human life and character, partly from the conformation of the human intellect, than by supposing deliberate transmission and copying from one nation to another.