At no time probably except in the Middle Ages would Jean de Meung, who towards the end of the thirteenth century took up the scheme which William of Lorris had left unfinished forty years earlier, have thought of continuing the older poem instead of beginning a fresh one for himself. And at no other time probably would any one, choosing to make a continuation, have carried it out by putting such entirely different wine into the same bottle. Of William himself little is known, or rather nothing, except that he must have been, as his continuator certainly was, a native of the Loire district; so that the _Rose_ is a product of Central, not, like _Renart_, of Northern France, and exhibits, especially in the Lorris portion, an approximation to Provencal spirit and form. The use of personification and abstraction, especially in relation to love-matters, had not been unknown in the troubadour poetry itself and in the northern verse, lyrical and other, which grew up beside or in succession to it. It rose no doubt partly, if not wholly, from the constant habit in sermons and theological treatises of treating the Seven Deadly Sins and other abstractions as entities. Every devout or undevout frequenter of the Church in those times knew "Accidia"[143] and Avarice, Anger and Pride, as bodily rather than ghostly enemies, furnished with a regular uniform, appearing in recognised circumstances and companies, acting like human beings. And these were by no means the only sacred uses of allegory. [Footnote 143: "Sloth" is a rather unhappy substitute for _Accidia_ ([Greek: akedeia]), the gloomy and impious despair and indifference to good living and even life, of which sloth itself is but a partial result.] [Sidenote: _William of Lorris and Jean de Meung._]