On the whole, I must repeat that the _chansons de geste_, which as we have them are the work of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in the main, form the second division in point of literary value of early mediaeval literature, while they possess, in a certain "sincerity and strength," qualities not to be found even in the Arthurian story itself. Despite the ardour with which they have been philologically studied for nearly three-quarters of a century, despite (or perhaps because of) the enthusiasm which one or two devotees have shown for their literary qualities, it does not seem to me that fair justice, or anything like it, has yet been generally done. German critics care little for literary merit, and are perhaps not often trained to appreciate it; in England the _chansons_ have been strangely little read. But the most singular thing is the cold reception, slightly if at all thawed recently, which they have met in France itself. It may give serious pause to the very high estimate generally entertained of French criticism by foreigners to consider this coldness, which once reached something like positive hostility in M. Ferdinand Brunetiere, the chief French literary critic of our generation. I regret to see that M. Lanson, the latest historian of French literature, has not dared to separate himself from the academic _grex_. "On ne saurait nier," he says, "que quelques uns aient eu du talent;" but he evidently feels that this generous concession is in need of guards and caveats. There is no "beaute formelle" in them, he says--no formal beauty in those magnificently sweeping _laisses_, of which the ear that has once learnt their music can no more tire thereafter than of the sound of the sea itself. The style (and if it be objected that his previous words have been directly addressed to the later _chansons_ and _chanson_ writers, here he expressly says that this style "est le meme style que dans le _Roland_," though "moins sobre, moins plein, moins sur") has "no beauty by itself," and finally he thinks that the best thing to do is "to let nine-tenths of the _chansons_ follow nine-tenths of our tragedies." I have read many _chansons_ and many tragedies; but I have never read a _chanson_ that has not more poetry in it than ninety-nine French tragedies out of a hundred.