spirit, which hardly dropped the sword except to take up the torch, was, poetic presentation and dressing apart, not so very different from the general temper of man after the break up of the Roman peace till the more or less definite mapping out of Europe into modern divisions. More than one Vivien and one William of Orange listened to Peter the Hermit. In the very isolation of the atmosphere of these romances, in its distance from modern thought and feeling, in its lack (as some have held) of universal quality and transcendent human interest, there is a certain element of strength. It was not above its time, and it therefore does not reach the highest forms of literature. But it was intensely _of_ its time; and thus it far exceeds the lowest kinds, and retains an abiding value even apart from the distinct, the high, and the very curious perfection, within narrow limits, of its peculiar form. [Sidenote: _Volume and age of the_ chansons.] [Sidenote: _Twelfth century._] It is probable that very few persons who are not specially acquainted with the subject are at all aware of the enormous bulk and number of these poems, even if their later _remaniements_ (as they are called) both in verse and prose--fourteenth and fifteenth century refashionings, which in every case meant a large extension--be left out of consideration. The most complete list published, that of M. Leon Gautier, enumerates 110. Of these he himself places only the _Chanson de Roland_ in the eleventh century, perhaps as early as the Norman Conquest of England, certainly not later than 1095. To the twelfth he assigns (and it may be observed that, enthusiastic as M. Gautier is on the literary side, he shows on all questions of age, &c., a wariness not always exhibited by scholars more exclusively philological) _Acquin_, _Aliscans_, _Amis et Amiles_, _Antioche Aspremont_, _Auberi le Bourgoing_, _Aye d'Avignon_, the _Bataille Loquifer_, the oldest (now only known in Italian) form of _Berte aus grans Pies_, _Beuves d'Hanstone_ (with another Italian form more or less independent), the _Charroi de Nimes_, _Les Chetifs_, the _Chevalerie Ogier de Danemarche_, the _Chevalerie Vivien_ (otherwise known as _Covenant Vivien_), the major part (also known by separate titles) of the _Chevalier au Cygne_, _La Conquete de la Petite Bretagne_ (another form of _Acquin_), the _Couronnement Loys_, _Doon de la Roche_, _Doon de Nanteuil_, the _Enfances Charlemagne_, the _Enfances Godefroi_, the _Enfances Roland_, the _Enfances Ogier_, _Floovant_, _Garin le Loherain_, _Garnier de Nanteuil_, _Giratz de Rossilho_, _Girbert de Metz_, _Gui de Bourgogne_, _Gui de Nanteuil_, _Helias_, _Hervis de Metz_, the oldest form of _Huon de Bordeaux_, _Jerusalem_, _Jourdains de Blaivies_, the Lorraine cycle, including _Garin_, &c., _Macaire_, _Mainet_, the _Moniage Guillaume_, the _Moniage Rainoart_, _Orson de Beauvais_, _Rainoart_, _Raoul de Cambrai_, _Les Saisnes_, the _Siege de Barbastre_, _Syracon_, and the