It must be for others to say how such a charge, in the present case, is helped by _laches_ or incompetence on the part of the surveyor. But enough has, I hope, been said to clear the scheme itself from the objection of uselessness or of impracticability. In one sense, no doubt, far more room than this volume, or a much larger, could provide, may seem to be required for the discussion and arrangement of so great and interesting a matter as the Literature of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries. But to say this, is only saying that no such account in such a space could be exhaustive: and it so happens that an exhaustive account is for the purpose not required--would indeed go pretty far towards the defeat of that purpose. What is wanted is to secure that the reader, whether he pursues his studies in more detail with regard to any of these literatures or not, shall at any rate have in his head a fair general notion of what they were simultaneously or in succession, of the relation in which they stood to each other, of the division of literary labour between them. If, on the other hand, it be said, "You propose to give, according to your scheme, a volume apiece to the fourteenth and even the fifteenth centuries, the work of which was far less original and interesting than the work of these two! Why do you couple these?" the answer is not difficult. In the first place, the work of these two centuries--which is mainly though not wholly the work of the hundred years that form their centre period--is curiously inseparable. In only a few cases do we know precise dates, and in many the _circa_ is of such a circuitous character that we can hardly tell whether the twelfth or the thirteenth century deserves the credit. In almost all the adoption of any intermediate date of severance would leave an awkward, raw, unreal division. We should leave off while the best of the _chansons de geste_ were still being produced, in the very middle of the development of the Arthurian legend, with half the _fabliaux_ yet to come and half the sagas unwritten, with the Minnesingers in full voice, with the tale of the Rose half told, with the Fox not yet broken up.