while _courtoisie_, the feminine side, is more Provençal. But the difference goes much deeper than any pair of terms can express it. The old French poems of heroic adventure, blent with more or less of that other-world imaginative quality known as “romance,” fall into three main cycles of subjects. They deal with Charlemagne and his Paladins (in which case they are more truly epic in character, and are called _chansons de geste_, a term properly thus restricted to incidents in supposed French history), or with King Arthur and his knights (together with the once independent legends of Tristram), or with classical heroes, whether of the Trojan legend or, like Alexander, of actual history. These three cycles have been named the “Carlovingian” (or “French”), the “Arthurian” (or “British”), and the “classical” (or “Grecian”). Or we may make four by subdividing the last into “Trojan” and “Alexandrian.” At the time of their composition the cycle which dealt with the classical subjects of antiquity was said to deal with “matter of Rome.” All antiquity was “Rome,” and all ancient heroes “Romans.” We find, then, songs of Roland and Oliver, romances of Tristram or Launcelot, romances of Alexander the Great, and many more. Some _romans_, called _d’aventures_, are independent of any cycle and make no pretence at all to be history. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries are rich in the poetical narratives which tell of heroic feats, or miracles of devotion and loyalty, mixed with much of the supernatural withal. This was the day of the Crusades, of conquests of the Saracens, single combats, adventures in distant lands, where dwarfs and enchanters, dragons and giants, were supposed to dwell; and nothing pleased the venturous barons more than to be told such tales to the music of the itinerant jongleurs. A further variety of these songs of exploit was the _lai_, which is too short and too lyrical to be an epic or a _roman_, and is rather the song of an epic episode. The allegorical poems—which they also called _romans_, as being similarly akin to epic and written in the vulgar tongue—long and tedious as they are to us, were not disdained by Chaucer, and gave the cue to several conspicuous works of the Chaucerians down to the sixteenth century. That most famous of all, the _Roman de la Rose_, was translated by our master of English undefiled. This poem, begun by Guillaume de Lorris as an “Art of Love,” after the manner of Ovid (as filtered through Provence), was continued a generation later by Jean de Meung as a satirical miscellany of learning and legend. It is all about a lover who sought to pluck a rose, about his difficulties in reaching it, about the abstract qualities which help or hinder him, about personified virtues and vices, such as Dame Idleness, who lets him into the garden, Avarice, Meanness, Hatred, who stand in his way, Fair-Seeming, who has much to say in the matter, and numerous others. Thanks to these agencies, it takes that unhappy