free from some ugly features which appear after the Italian wars of the late fifteenth century, it has never been more frankly destitute of shamefacedness. [Sidenote: _Their wit._] It would, however, be extremely unfair to let it be supposed that the _fabliaux_ contain nothing but obscenity, or that they can offer attractions to no one save those whom obscenity attracts. As in those famous English followings of them, where Chaucer considerably reduced the licence of language, and still more considerably increased the dose of wit--the Reeve's and Miller's sections of the _Canterbury Tales_--the lack of decency is very often accompanied by no lack of sense. And a certain proportion, including some of the very best in a literary point of view, are not exposed to the charge of any impropriety either of language or of subject. [Sidenote: _Definition and subjects._] There is, indeed, no special reason why the _fabliau_ should be "improper" (except for the greater ease of getting a laugh) according to its definition, which is capable of being drawn rather more sharply than is always the case with literary kinds. It is a short tale in verse--almost invariably octosyllabic couplets--dealing, for the most part from the comic point of view, with incidents of ordinary life. This naturally admits of the widest possible diversity of subject: indeed it is only by sticking to the condition of "ordinary life" that the _fabliau_ can be differentiated from the short romance on one side and the allegoric beast-fable on the other. Even as it is, its most recent editors have admitted among their 157 examples not a few which are simple _jeux d'esprit_ on the things of humanity, and others which are in effect short romances and nothing else. Of these last is the best known of all the non-Rabelaisian _fabliaux_, "Le Vair Palefroi," which has been Englished by Leigh Hunt and shortly paraphrased by Peacock, while examples of the former may be found without turning very long over even one of M. M. de Montaiglon and Raynaud's pretty and learned volumes. A very large proportion, as might be expected, draw their comic interest from satire on priests, on women, or on both together; and this very general character of the _fabliaux_ (which, it must be remembered, were performed or recited by the very same _jongleurs_ who conducted the publication of the _chansons de geste_ and the romances) was no doubt partly the result and partly the cause of the persistent dislike and disfavour with which the Church regarded the profession of jonglerie. It is, indeed, from the _fabliaux_ themselves that we learn much of what we know about the _jongleurs_; and one of not the least amusing[134] deals with the half-clumsy, half-satiric boasts of two members of the order, who misquote the titles of their _repertoire_, make by accident or intention ironic comments on its contents, and in short do _not_ magnify their office in a very modern spirit of humorous writing.