verses, like those of Richard Coeur-de-Lion, are monuments of
English literature. To this day their ballad measure is better
suited to English than to French; even the words and idioms are more
English than French. Any one who attacks them boldly will find that
the "vers romieus" run along like a ballad, singing their own
meaning, and troubling themselves very little whether the meaning is
exact or not. One's translation is sure to be full of gross
blunders, but the supreme blunder is that of translating at all when
one is trying to catch not a fact but a feeling. If translate one
must, we had best begin by trying to be literal, under protest that
it matters not a straw whether we succeed. Twelfth-century art was
not precise; still less "precieuse," like Moliere's famous
seventeenth-century prudes.

The verses of the young monk, William, who came from the little
Norman village of Saint-Pair, near Granville, within sight of the
Mount, were verses not meant to be brilliant. Simple human beings
like rhyme better than prose, though both may say the same thing, as
they like a curved line better than a straight one, or a blue better
than a grey; but, apart from the sensual appetite, they chose rhyme
in creating their literature for the practical reason that they
remembered it better than prose. Men had to carry their libraries in
their heads.

These lines of William, beginning his story, are valuable because
for once they give a name and a date. Abbot Robert of Torigny ruled
at the Mount from 1154 to 1186. We have got to travel again and
again between Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres during these years, but
for the moment we must hurry to get back to William the Conqueror
and the "Chanson de Roland." William of Saint-Pair comes in here,