What has been said about popular poetry applies also to popular
painting. In the landscapes of Goliardic literature there is nothing
specific to a single locality--no name like Vaucluse, no pregnant
touch that indicates one scene selected from a thousand. The landscape
is always a background, more northern or more southern as the case may
be, but penetrated with the feeling of the man who has been happy or
has suffered there. This feeling, broadly, sensuously diffused, as in
a masterpiece of Titian, prepares us for the human element to be
exhibited.

The foreground of these pictures is occupied by a pair of lovers
meeting after the long winter's separation, a dance upon the village
green, a young man gazing on the mistress he adores, a disconsolate
exile from his home, the courtship of a student and a rustic beauty,
or perhaps the grieved and melancholy figure of one whose sweetheart
has proved faithless. Such actors in the comedy of life are defined
with fervent intensity of touch against the leafy vistas of the
scene. The lyrical cry emerges clear and sharp in all that concerns
their humanity.

The quality of love expressed is far from being either platonic or
chivalrous. It is love of the sensuous, impulsive, appetitive kind, to
which we give the name of Pagan. The finest outbursts of passion are
emanations from a potent sexual desire. Meanwhile, nothing indicates
the character or moral quality of either man or woman. The student and
the girl are always _vis-à-vis_, fixed characters in this lyrical
love-drama. He calls her Phyllis, Flora, Lydia, Glycerion, Caecilia.
He remains unnamed, his physical emotion sufficing for personal
description. The divinity presiding over them is Venus. Jove and