The great allegorical poems, so much beloved mainly in Northern France in the thirteenth century, are more nearly prose compositions in their abstract type. I will only mention one example of these, that is, the famous _Roman de la Rose._ We may compare or rather contrast such with the many anecdotes and still lengthier narratives, the so-called _fabliaux_ and _contes_, which rather borrow their subject-matter from contemporary life, tales of knights, priests, citizens, and above all _amours_, lawful and the reverse, retailed to us sometimes in the comic vein, at others in the tragic, now in prose, and again in verse. Such was the type of writing which the clear intellect and trained culture of a Boccaccio carried to its perfection. There is a final class of such compositions, which, turning to the ancients--with a casual knowledge of the Epic of Homer and Virgil, or ancient legend, celebrates also, in precisely the manner of the Epopaea of chivalry, the exploits of Trojan heroes, the foundation of Rome by Æneas, the conquests of Alexander, and other like subjects. And this will conclude what I have to say upon the Epic poetry of the Middle Ages. (_γ_) In a _third_ principal group of which I have still to speak, the rich and pregnant study of _ancient_ literature marks a point of departure for the purer artistic taste of a new culture, in whose learning, assimilation, and blending of diverse elements, however, we frequently miss that primitive creative power, which we admire in the Hindoos, Arabs, as also in Homer and writers of the Middle Ages. In the many-sided development in which, dating from this age of the re-awakened sciences and their influence on national literatures, the actual conditions of mankind undergo a reform in religion, political condition, morals, and social relations, epic poetry also seizes hold of the most varied content, as also the most manifold forms, the historical course of which I can only direct attention to in its most essential characteristics. (_αα_) _First,_ we may remark that it is still the _Middle Ages_, which now, as previously, supplies the material for the Epos, although the same is conceived and presented in a new spirit, namely, one permeated with the culture of classic literature> We find here pre-eminently two directions in which the art of epic poetry displays itself.