This immense body of verse, which for many reasons it is very desirable to study as a whole, is still, after the best part of a century, to a great extent unprinted, and (as was unavoidable) such of its constituents as have been sent to press have been dealt with on no very uniform principles. It was less inevitable, and is more to be regretted, that the dissensions of scholars on minute philological points have caused the repeated printing of certain texts, while others have remained inaccessible; and it cannot but be regarded as a kind of petty treason to literature thus to put the satisfaction of private crotchets before the "unlocking of the word-hoard" to the utmost possible extent. The earliest _chansons_ printed[23] were, I believe, M. Paulin Paris's _Berte aus grans Pies_, M. Francisque Michel's _Roland_; and thereafter these two scholars and others edited for M. Techener a very handsome set of "Romances des Douze Pairs," as they were called, including _Les Saisnes_, _Ogier_, _Raoul de Cambrai_, _Garin_, and the two great crusading _chansons_, _Antioche_ and _Jerusalem_. Other scattered efforts were made, such as the publication of a beautiful edition of _Baudouin de Seboure_ at Valenciennes as early as 1841; while a Belgian scholar, M. de Reiffenberg, published _Le Chevalier au Cygne_, and a Dutch one, Dr Jonckbloet, gave a large part of the later numbers of the Garin de Montglane cycle in his _Guillaume d'Orange_ (2 vols., The Hague, 1854). But the great opportunity came soon after the accession of Napoleon III., when a Minister favourable to literature, M. de Fourtou, gave, in a moment of enthusiasm, permission to publish the entire body of the _chansons_. Perfect wisdom would probably have decreed the acceptance of the godsend by issuing the whole, with a minimum of editorial apparatus, in some such form as that of our Chalmers's Poets, the bulk of which need probably not have been exceeded in order to give the oldest forms of every real _chanson_ from _Roland_ to the _Bastart de Bouillon_. But perfect wisdom is not invariably present in the councils of men, and the actual result took the form of ten agreeable little volumes, in the type, shape, and paper of the "Bibliotheque Elzevirienne" with abundant editorial matter, paraphrases in modern French, and the like. _Les Anciens Poetes de la France_, as this series was called, appeared between 1858, which saw the first volume, and 1870, which fatal year saw the last, for the Republic had no money to spare for such monarchical glories as the _chansons_. They are no contemptible possession; for the ten volumes give fourteen _chansons_ of very different ages, and rather interestingly representative of different kinds. But they are a very small portion of the whole, and in at least one instance, _Aliscans_, they double on a former edition. Since then the Societe des Anciens Textes Francais has edited some _chansons_, and independent German and French scholars have given some more; but no